


Divided We Fall

by sunstarunicorn



Series: It's a Magical Flashpoint [33]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, Flashpoint (TV), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Merlin (TV)
Genre: AU of Fault Lines, Emotional Fallout, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-08-28 03:36:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 23,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16715840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunstarunicorn/pseuds/sunstarunicorn
Summary: Team One has worked magic-side for three years.  Behind the scenes, arrangements are made for Dr. Toth to conduct Team One’s psych evaluations this year.  As suspicions rise and unity fractures, can Team One survive the fallout?  AU of Fault Lines





	1. Evaluation Day

**Author's Note:**

> spoilers for 03x13: Fault Lines. Pretty much the entire episode. And I am using dialogue from the episode. This story is the thirty-third in the Magical Flashpoint series. It follows "Broken Dawn".
> 
> Although all original characters belong to me, I do not own _Flashpoint_ , _Harry Potter_ , _Narnia_ , or _Merlin_.

The man behind the desk chuckled as he placed his call.  How _appropriate_ that the very technology the Muggles had introduced to his world would be part of their downfall…  The phone rang twice, then was picked up.

“Hello?”

“Have you had time to peruse the file?” the man asked, skipping pleasantries as his eyes gleamed with excitement.  It had been long and long since he’d _personally_ involved himself in more than planning and behind the scenes execution…he’d forgotten how _enjoyable_ it was to see a plan come together, to tip the row of dominos and have a front row seat to the fallout.

There was a disturbed silence from the other.  “I have,” he finally responded.  “I also pulled his official file; none of what you found is in there.”

The man in the office allowed a deep sigh of regret.  “I feared as much,” he murmured.  “You see, then, my concerns?”

A sputter.  “How is he even still on-duty?” the other blurted in dismay.

Another sigh of regret, this one with tinges of remorse.  “Quite simply?  There is no one to take his place.  That and a great deal of political influence of his own.”  The man let that hang, glee showing on his face, even as none showed in his voice.  “It must be completely legitimate, you understand?  If there is even a _whiff_ that his removal is motivated by…our concerns…his political ‘allies’ _will_ act and all our efforts to pull him back from the edge will fail.”

Silence lingered on the phone line and the man in the office forced himself to wait patiently.  Finally, the other party spoke, “I believe I understand your concerns.  It…will not be easy…and I cannot promise success…but I think I know a way to accomplish what you ask.”

“And?”  Patience, patience, the man reminded himself, though he clutched the phone tighter in his excitement.

“If this works, _we_ will not have to do anything, sir.  They will do all the work for us.”

“What do you have in mind?”

The faintest of smiles came through in the other man’s voice.  “You’ll see.”

* * * * *

Constable Ed Lane pulled into the parking lot of SRU Headquarters in his black Ford Flex Limited; the car gleamed in the late spring sun and its owner parked and retrieved his bag as he got out.  The constable started walking towards the building, then halted as he stared up at it.  Once again, he asked himself when it had come to this…when Sophie had gotten so fed up with his job that she couldn’t take it anymore.

As he had every other time, he pushed his dilemma away and strode into the building, a smile coming to his face as he spotted Winnie and two of his teammates in the atrium.  “Word up!”

All three looked over and Wordy shot Ed a wide grin, calling, “Eddie!”

Spike, peeking around the column he was leaning against, grinned himself and added, “Big day.”

“Study hard?” Ed jibed as he rounded Winnie’s desk.

“What’s that thing called?” Spike asked immediately, plastering a confused look on his face.

“Yeah, yeah, the long metal thing,” Wordy agreed, laughter gleaming in his eyes.

“Loud noises…” Ed led, as solemn as a teacher coaching a struggling student.

Spike’s eyes cleared and he pointed at Ed with a triumphant, “Gun!”  As Ed pointed back and grinned, Spike questioned, “See?  Why do we have to requalify?”

Before Ed could reply or Wordy could toss in another joke, Donna Sabine appeared behind them.  Though Ed was still getting used to having another SRU team ‘in the know’, he found he rather liked it.  This year, they all knew, the Boss would have to do the evals despite the incredibly difficult past few weeks he’d been through, but maybe next year, Team Three’s primary negotiator could pick up a bit of the load as well.

“Hey, hey,” Donna greeted them all.

“Donna,” Ed returned.

“Edward,” she drawled, before asking, “You guys ready to get your butts kicked?”

Ed’s eyes lit up.  “Your team’s playing the bad guys?”

“Yeah.”

Keeping his expression steady, though his eyes danced with suppressed mirth, Ed clarified, “Let me get this right: Team Three against Team One?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”  She could see where he was going, but Donna wasn’t giving an inch.

A slight grin broke through as Ed teased, “Team Three against Team One?”

“Yeah,” she jibed, “Go suit up.  And, uh…”

Ed’s humor faded.  “What’s going on?”

The blonde head turned towards the nearby room, then back.  “Commander Holleran wants to see you in the briefing room.”

“Okay,” Ed acknowledged, though a twinge of unease surged.

“I’ll see you out there,” Sabine volleyed before departing.

* * * * *

As Ed headed for the briefing room, he heard his boss’s voice rise, just a bit.  “Commander, why the last minute change?  And if you knew things were going this way, you could’ve told me before today.”

“Could’ve told you what?” Ed demanded as he entered the briefing room.  “What’s going on?”  He looked between his boss and Commander Holleran expectantly.

It was Holleran who spoke.  “We’ve got somebody else to do your team’s psychological evaluation this year.”

Confusion, backed by unease, surged.  “Sir, almost a third of our calls are classified,” Ed protested.  “Until last week, the Boss was the only guy who _could_ do the evals.  What, are you going to have Team Three’s primary negotiator do them?”

Although, ordinarily, Ed would have resented even the _idea_ of Greg _not_ doing the evals, even a blind man could see that the Sergeant was struggling to keep his emotional balance after a year of close calls, both work-related and personal; quite simply, Greg _needed_ help, _needed_ a break, before _he_ broke.  The problem with _getting_ that help had always been the magic-side hot calls and Madame Locksley’s stubborn refusal to bring another SRU team into the Auror SRU…it left Team One and their Sergeant with no one _but_ Greg to do the evals; no one else had access to all the information needed for the psychological evaluations.

Commander Holleran frowned, shaking his head.  “No, not Team Three’s negotiator,” he replied, a tinge of regret in his voice.  “We need someone more objective.”

“Objective?” Ed inquired, incredulity in his voice.  Even the most objective person in the _world_ couldn’t do a proper evaluation without Official Secrets Act clearance.  And, judging by the look on Holleran’s face, that was _not_ the case with whoever was doing the evals.

“Your team’s had a lot of tough calls.”

“That’s the job,” Ed countered.  “And our toughest have been _magic-side_.”

Holleran ignored the ‘magic-side’ emphasis.  “Twice as many traumatic calls as any other team.  We need to see if there are any weak links, stress fractures…”

“Excuse me?”  Ed’s voice oozed outrage.  Bad enough his boss was being pushed aside, but now his _team_ was being insulted?

The Boss stepped in, likely sensing the impending eruption.  “I’m gonna be in the room, Eddie.”  An expectant look was turned on Holleran.  “Right, Commander?”

“You’ll observe,” Holleran conceded, though he tossed the Sergeant a mild warning look.

“Observe?” was Ed’s incredulous echo.

Then Holleran dropped an even bigger bomb.  “Donna Sabine’s gonna run your team through tactical requalification.”

“I drill my own team,” Ed hissed, hackles rising.  First the evals, now _this_?

“She’s gonna run you through the shoot house, test your team’s skills, and then break you down individually.”

Something was wrong with this picture and Ed _hated_ not having the whole picture.  “Okay,” he growled, “What the heck’s going on?”

To Ed’s supreme displeasure, Greg stepped in again.  “Thank you, Commander.”  The Sergeant ushered his team leader away with a quiet, “Come on.”

As the two left, Ed glanced at his boss, inwardly still seething.  “You knew about this,” he accused.

“Just take it easy,” Greg murmured.  “We’ve got nothing to worry about.”

Ed wasn’t sure he agreed with that; visions of Jill Hastings and her fury over the blacked out transcript danced through his head.  That had been _one_ transcript…how much angrier would the mystery psychologist be at being denied dozens of transcripts?

* * * * *

Donna Sabine led the way towards the SRU training area, giving them the initial brief.  Ahead of them were the two primary practice buildings, one a squat two story affair with a flat roof and a high railing around it.  The building sported both indoor and outdoor stairs, giving both attackers and defenders multiple ways in or out and none of the large windows around the structure had any glass.  Nearby, a second building with five stories in the front and two-and-a-half in the back loomed.  It would not be used for any of the tests Team One had to pass, even though they’d all been in it many times before.  On a grassy area between Team One and the second building, an obstacle course had already been set up, for use later in the day.

“Okay, you got ninety seconds upon entry to clear the building,” Donna finished, turning to walk the last few steps backwards

“Ninety seconds?” Spike questioned.

“Yeah,” Donna confirmed with a nod.  “Does that worry you, Spike?  Spending a little too much time in the truck?”

“No, I mean, ninety seconds-- I’m gonna have to bring a book or a magazine or something,” Spike retorted, drawing laughter from his teammates.

“All right,” Ed drawled, “You got any more surprises for us?”

“Of course.  Think this was a pony ride?” Donna questioned.

“Let’s do it,” Parker decided.

“Okay, five minutes,” Donna called, backing up before turning to job towards the building.  “Gear up, figure out a tac plan.”

As soon as she was gone, Spike’s humor dropped.  “Guys?  Ninety seconds?”

“Spike, that’s what the cross training’s for,” Ed replied, outwardly unconcerned.

“Standard test’s three minutes,” Wordy muttered.

“Nothing about this year’s been standard,” Lou countered quietly, though he looked just as unhappy as the rest about the ninety seconds requirement.

“What’s going on?” Sam asked, “Why is Donna running this?”

“Yeah,” Spike agreed, “Why we got outsiders running the psych test?”

“Yeah,” Ed observed, staring straight at his Sergeant, “That’s a good question.”

Jules picked up on the undertones immediately.  “Do you know who’s doing it?” she inquired of their Sergeant.

“Time and place,” Parker chided.  “Let’s focus.”

Ed accepted that with nary a stumble.  “Okay,” he decided, “They’re gonna be looking for two entry teams, we are gonna give them three.  They’re going to be glued to the doors; we are going to take the windows.  So Spike, Wordy, Lou: Black Bravo Two.  Jules, Sam: Black Bravo One.”

“We’ll go in with hooks,” Sam put in.

“Boss and I’ll take the back door,” Ed continued, “We need you guys to clear and cover our entry.”

“Copy that,” Jules acknowledged.

“And remember,” Ed finished, starting forward, followed by his team, “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast…”

Together Team One called, “Fast is lethal!”

* * * * *

The man who arrived wore an impeccable black suit and tie along with plain black wingtip shoes, and carried two bulky suitcases, one silver, one brown.  He strode into the open briefing room, his stride unhurried and his professional demeanor already in place.  As he entered, the room’s ambient light shone against his close cut silver hair.

* * * * *

Team One raced around the side of the training building, equipment already in hand and ready to go.  Spike, Wordy, and Lou carried hooks and climbing rope in their hands; already they scanned the building for the best spot to throw their hooks.  Every member of Team One now had large goggles around their necks, ready to pull up and protect their eyes from the grenades about to be thrown into the subject building.  The group stopped by two windows and the three hook throwers twirled the hooks and tossed them up to the building’s roof, where they snagged on the railing and held.

“Let’s set the hooks room by room and watch your blind spots,” Ed yelled as the first hook flew upwards.  “We’ll link up second floor,” the team leader added as the second hook flew.  “Blocks on point, cover with rifles!”  The last hook soared and the three climbers approached the ropes and prepared to hold them steady while their teammates entered.  “Sam, Jules, let’s go!”

The first smoke grenade flew through the farthest window and the assault was on.  Parker tossed the second grenade, sticking close to his partner as Ed yelled, “Bravo Two, hard entry, more grenades!”

As Sam braced himself against the wall and Jules raced forward, the team leader ordered, “Hit ‘em hard, smoke ‘em out!”  Sam gave Jules a leg up to the window and Jules grunted as she grabbed hold and pulled herself up.

“Let’s go!” Ed roared as Jules disappeared and Sam darted away to let Wordy take his place  and give the blond sniper a leg up through the same window.  As Wordy pushed Sam upwards, Ed called, “Break your wing, eyes left.  I’m on point.”

Even as he spoke, Lane and Parker fell back to the outside staircase and headed up to reach the back door.  “Sam, Word, cover us,” Ed barked over the comm; nearby, the trio of climbers attacked the ropes and started up the side of the wall, keeping their eyes open.  “They’re gonna be stacked at the door.  Go, go, go, let’s move!  Show them how it’s done!”

Inside, Sam and Jules headed through the first hallway, checking for any ambushes as they moved.  Jules whipped around a doorway right next to her and fired, taking out the first subject.  “One down.  Sam’s on his way,” she reported.

* * * * *

Inside the briefing room, the new arrival set down a stack of light blue folders with a thump.  Each was marked with the Strategic Response Unit seal and each represented the official file of a member of Team One.  Carefully, methodically, the man picked up the first file, opening it to reveal Jules’ picture.  After a brief inspection, he placed her file on the desk, open, and picked up the next folder to reveal Sam’s file and picture.  He placed Sam’s file right below Jules’.

* * * * *

“Twenty seconds from entry,” Spike called as he, Wordy, and Lou climbed.

Lou, in the lead, called, “Wordy, cover me from a window.”

Wordy, in the middle, grunted acknowledgement and kept moving.

* * * * *

The man inside the briefing room set down Lou’s file, just below Spike’s, and picked up the next file, opening it to see Wordy’s picture.  He started a new stack of open folders with Wordy’s file.

* * * * *

As he headed up the stairs, Parker tossed another smoke grenade into the subject building, but stayed focused on the door as, behind him, Ed called, “Sam, we are in position.”

“Sam, talk to us,” Parker added, reaching the door as the grenade he’d tossed started smoking and hissing as it released its gas.

* * * * *

With only two folders left, the man inside the briefing room opened the first with a snap, laying down Parker’s file below Wordsworth’s.  The final folder was opened and set down; Ed Lane glaring up from his photo.  Step one complete.

* * * * *

Inside the building, an alarm wailed, signaling the training session in progress; Sam moved steadily, ignoring the alarm with the ease of long practice.  “There’s one on the door,” he reported quietly, moving to a better angle.  As soon as he reached it, he fired, calling, “Two down!”

At nearly the same instant, Ed and Greg surged through their door; Ed fired as he entered.  “Number three down!” he yelled.

“Forty seconds left,” Greg reported as he and Ed joined Sam.

Jules caught up as Sam hissed, “Jules, basement.”

“Stay alert!  Two targets left,” Parker called as he and Ed split from Jules and Sam, heading for one side of the building and the staircase towards the roof.  In the lead, Ed kept his weapon ready, but aimed down, checking for any signs of the final two subjects as he moved.  At the stairs, they found one of the subjects, firing down the stairs and driving the two SRU cops back and out of range.

As he and Ed took cover, Greg suggested, “Flash bang and cover fire?”

“I don’t like the percentages,” Ed replied as the shooting continued.

* * * * *

In the briefing room, the silver-haired man opened up his brown suitcase, gently unhooking the lid of the case from the bottom, where an old machine rested.  Though old, it was well cared for and in perfect working order.  Its owner checked it to make sure it had arrived safely, then ran a hand over the label in one corner.  _Polygraph._   Picking up a red pen from the other side of the case, the man moved away, his eyes examining the table and the other polygraph machine.

Serious gray-blue eyes regarded his preparations and he mentally judged whether or not he was ready for the task ahead.  Clean-shaven, with brows that were still dark, unlike his hair, and with lines on his forehead and below his eyes, the psychologist was a man who regarded his job with the utmost respect and care.  While not flashy or openly heroic, he believed that, in his own way, he saved lives by ensuring that those he interviewed and tested were as fit for duty as it was humanly possible to be.  His standards were exact and his adherence to the moral codes of his job even more so.

Finished with his final inspection, he looked up and walked along the table, regarding the mounted screen and the images on it thoughtfully.  Team One…a team of cops often seen as heroes and called in to deal with the worst situations.  He’d familiarized himself as much as possible with their files and also requested to see those files marked as ‘classified’.  It irked him that his request had been summarily denied, seemingly without even a flicker of consideration, but he would make do.  The files he _had_ been given were a wealth of data, after all.

It was as he was regarding the computer screen that Commander Holleran arrived, suspicion in his deep brown eyes.  Though Parker certainly needed help, Holleran did _not_ understand why that help had to come in the form of _this_ man.

“Who’s first?” the psychologist inquired without turning.

“Listen, uh…” Holleran began.

“Second thoughts?” the other inquired.

Brown eyes hardened.  “As I’m sure you know, I never had _first_ thoughts,” Holleran returned.  “However good you are, we both know you’re working with incomplete data.”

The psychologist did not deny it.  Instead, he pointed out, “That can still be remedied.”

Holleran shook his head.  “You don’t have Official Secrets Act clearance.”

Surprise flashed through gray-blue eyes.  “I wasn’t aware the Official Secrets Act was still around,” he remarked.  “I thought it had been replaced.”

“Most of it was,” Holleran agreed, watching the psychologist closely.  “But the calls you’ve been denied access to all fall under the provisions that remain.”

A thoughtful expression crossed the psychologist’s face as he took in and considered Holleran’s reply.  “Then on _that_ matter, we are at both an impasse and an agreement.”  At the startled look he got, he smiled.  “You are correct that I’m working with incomplete data, but that can’t be helped.”

* * * * *

As the trio of climbers reached the top floor, they could hear the sounds of gunfire nearby.  Spike, the last one, called, “We’re in!” as he leaped through the window.

One of the two top shooters aimed through a grate in the floor, firing regularly to keep the men below pinned down.  Below, Ed and Greg returned fire to keep the shooter’s focus on them and away from their teammates.

“Team One!” Ed yelled as he fired, “He’s shooting through the roof!  Your four!”

* * * * *

“But that’s not what you’re really worried about, is it?” the psychologist remarked shrewdly.  “You’re worried about my reputation.”

Holleran advanced into the room, not denying the assertion for a second.  “There’s gotta be a good reason to--”

“I know,” came the instant agreement.  “There’s gotta be a good reason to break up a team.”


	2. A Tremor

Inside the training structure, the two last shooters still had most of Team One pinned down.  One of the shooters kept firing through the grate between him and his targets while Greg returned fire, determined to keep the subject from figuring out Team One’s contingency plan.

“Sam!” Ed roared.

“No joy!” Sam yelled back from where he and Jules were tucked behind the staircase.  He aimed upwards, but had nothing to fire at.

Above them, Lou, Spike, and Wordy moved as a single unit, weapons up and ready.  “I see him,” Lou called.  “Got him.”

Beside him, Spike added, “Wordy?  Last target’s yours.”

The trio opened fire, Lou’s first shot hitting the floor shooter before he even realized he was in danger.  They surged into the room, still firing, and Spike yelled, “Gun!”

The final shooter jerked around, only to freeze as Wordy’s shot hit her, dead center of the chest.  “Oh!” she cried, before recovering and yelling down the stairs, “Cut the sound!”  As the alarm’s wail stopped and Team One started removing their protective goggles, she turned back to the three who’d finished the session.  “Three seconds left.  Nice.”  The blonde inspected her vest and asked, “Who was that?”

Sheepish but proud, Wordy replied, “Uh, that was me.”

Teasingly and with a wide grin, Spike announced, “I got your back, buddy,” emphasizing each word with a thump to Wordy’s shoulder.  Over the tech’s shoulder, Lou grinned at the byplay and gave Spike a thwack of his own; Wordy grinned back at his teammates, still flush with victory.

“Let’s go, guys,” Donna remarked, heading down the stairs.

As they went down, their Sergeant’s, “Good work, everyone!” echoed, drawing an appreciative whoop from Wordy and twin “Yeah!”s from Lou and Spike.

“Team One!” Wordy cheered as they hit the bottom of the stairs.

Donna, not about to let the Team One cheerfest go without comment, shot at Ed, “I had you pinned.”

Ed smirked, riposting with, “For about two seconds.”

“An extra set of eyes on the roof, you would’ve seen the shooter,” Donna countered, “It’s a risky call to split the team in three.”

As her phone rang, Ed drawled, “Gotta do what you gotta do.”

As Donna answered her phone with a quick, “Hey,” Jules and Sam entered, just as flush with victory as their teammates.

“Good job, guys,” Sam called, heading over to trade thumps and high-fives with his teammates.

“That was awesome, you guys,” Jules followed up, though she paused by Donna as the latter spoke on the phone.

“Okay, yeah,” Donna confirmed.  “Got it.”  Before hanging up, Donna questioned, “Hey, Winnie, do you know who it is?”  She paused a second to listen.  “Okay,” she remarked before hanging up with all of Team One’s attention squarely on her.  “Wordy, you’re up,” Donna called, “Psych eval.”

“I’m coming with you,” Parker interjected at once.

As the two moved to leave, Ed asked, “So who’s it gonna be?”

“Larry Toth,” Sabine reported.

“Are you kidding me?” Jules demanded in dismay; the two departing Team One members stopped, confusion on Wordy’s face and resignation on Parker’s.

“Why, you know him?” Sabine inquired curiously.

Ed’s attention switched to his Sergeant.  “Boss, you know who it was going to be?”

“Holleran told me when you walked in, Eddie, yeah,” Greg admitted.

“This was supposed to be a routine requalify,” Ed snapped.

“Who’s Toth?” Sam piped up, though his teammates looked just as confused.

“Military psychologist,” Jules filled in.

“He breaks up teams,” Ed growled.

Greg instantly countered.  “He does not break up teams.”

“Oh, come on,” Ed protested.

The Sergeant’s eyes hardened a touch.  “He’s a specialist in team psychology.  We’ve had some tough calls.”

“And you’re on board with this?” Ed asked incredulously.

The moment of silence was telling.  “Not completely,” Greg admitted.  “I’d prefer if it had been someone cleared to know about _all_ of our calls.”

“He’s not?” Lou questioned, surprise showing.

“No, he’s not,” Greg confirmed.  “He knows he doesn’t have full access, so if you need to back off because it’s classified, he has to accept that, but be careful if he starts pushing at our magic-side calls.”  Drawing himself up a bit, Greg added, “I’m gonna be in the room with you, so if he starts pushing too hard, I’ll step in and remind him, but this is how it has to be this year.”

The Sergeant let that sink in, then focused on Wordy.  “You ready?”

“Ready,” Wordy confirmed and the pair headed off.

In an effort to break the tension, Donna asked the rest of the team, “Do the next drill?”

Ed, though, hardly heard her.  Toth.  Who had it out for them…and why?

* * * * *

As Wordy and Greg arrived at the briefing room, Toth stood with his back to the door, arranging a few last things.  Greg led with, “Dr. Toth.”

Toth turned, giving both men a smile as he shook hands with Parker.  “Oh, you’re Sergeant Parker.”

“Yes, sir,” Greg confirmed.  Gesturing to his constable, he added, “This is Kevin Wordsworth.”

“People call me Wordy,” Wordy remarked as he, too, shook Toth’s hand.

“Nickname,” Toth observed with a slim smile.  “Nice.  Means you’re liked.”  Turning, he guided Wordy towards the set up table with the machines, folders, and notes already arranged on it; Greg felt a shiver of foreboding go through him as he took in the two machines and his sixth sense sparked at him to pay _very_ close attention.

“Wordy, why don’t you have a seat over here?” Toth instructed, pointing Wordy to the chair directly opposite from his own.

Greg leaned closer to the table as his constable sat down.  “What’s this?” he questioned, gesturing to the two machines laid out.

“Polygraph,” Toth replied.

“I can see that,” Greg remarked, keeping his tone level.  “What for?”

Wordy’s uncertainty, awakened after the discussion in the shoot house, spiked as he questioned, “Lie detector?”

Toth calmly countered, “Well, think of it as a stress detector.”

“That’s pretty old school,” Greg observed, his own uncertainty hovering in the background.

“Digital detectors have no charm,” Toth opined, “These two have been with me for a long time.”  Greg was skeptical, but, as it wasn’t like they had much choice, he was willing to go along with Toth…for now.  As he watched, Toth picked up the first component and requested, “Wordy, do you mind?  Raise your arms, would you?”

“Yeah,” Wordy agreed, gamely lifting his arms out of the way so Toth could strap him in.

As Toth worked, he added, “The other one’s for you, Sergeant.”

“Really?” an unimpressed Greg queried.  That was when a piece of the puzzle clicked into place.  For some reason, _he_ was under the microscope just as much…perhaps even _more_ than his team.  And if that was true…in protecting his team, he might well go down himself…

Unaware of the dark turn to the Sergeant’s thoughts, Toth explained, “I’ll monitor your reactions as I talk to your team.  Have a seat.”

Trading a resigned look with Wordy, Greg sat down, already calculating his strategy to get his team through the psych evals without bringing _all_ of them down.

* * * * *

As Ed and Spike tackled the first obstacle course, Ed yelled, “Let’s go!  Let’s go!  Go, go!”

On the sidelines, Commander Holleran and Constable Donna Sabine watched the two men race along with the heavy dummies over their shoulders.  “How’d they do on the CQB?” Holleran asked.

“They did great,” Donna replied, stopwatch in hand and a folder under one arm.  “Individual testing’s next.”

“Good.”

Without looking up, Donna remarked, “They’re a tight team, sir.  They’ve been through a lot, but…it doesn’t get much better than them.”

Holleran kept his eyes on his top team.  “I’m not the one who ordered the outside psych evaluation.”

He could feel Donna’s eyes snap to him.  “What do you mean?”

Without changing his expression, even as Ed Lane looked up from his bent over position and over at them, Holleran turned towards Donna and said, “Just what I said.  I wasn’t the one who ordered it.”

“Who did?”

* * * * *

With both Sergeant and constable hooked into the polygraph machines, Toth took his seat and started his machines, watching them carefully for several seconds.  “We have a baseline,” Toth announced.

“Great,” Wordy remarked, outwardly collected, but Greg’s ‘team sense’ hummed with the man’s coiling tension.

“We’re going to do some word association,” Toth explained calmly, dividing his focus between Wordy and his polygraph machine as he spoke.

“Mm-hmm,” Wordy acknowledged, eyes on the psychologist.

“First word that comes to you, no thinking,” Toth ordered.

“Sure,” Wordy agreed.

“And I’m going to throw in some other questions.  Again, no thinking.”

“No thinking.  No problem.”  The brunet’s smile was shaky and nervous; Greg bit his lip and stayed silent.

“Orange.”

“Citrus.”

“Shampoo?”

“Conditioner.”

“Coffee,” Toth snapped.

“Double-double.”

“What did you have for breakfast this morning?”

Greg felt it: confusion and a man thrown off his stride.  “Uh…what…” Wordy stuttered.

That was wrong; Wordy should have been able to snap back an answer just like he had the other questions.  “Coffee?” Toth offered with a slight smile; Greg’s hackles rose…Toth had been _expecting_ the stumble…but why?  And how?

To Greg’s further dismay, Wordy didn’t catch on immediately.  “C-- Double-double.  I mean, yeah,” the constable finished sheepishly.

“What else?” Toth pressed.

The Sergeant watched as Wordy fumbled again.  “Uh, what do you mean?”

“For breakfast,” Toth practically purred.  When Wordy didn’t answer, he remarked, “You seem a little distracted.”

A little distracted?  Furiously, determinedly, Greg started making mental notes of his own, even as he judged when to throw in a distraction of his own.  “Maybe I need another coffee,” Wordy joked weakly.

“Do you sometimes find it hard to concentrate?” Toth inquired.

“No,” Wordy denied at once, but Greg wasn’t comforted.

Toth reached forward with his pen and made a note on the polygraph machine’s readout, his gaze calm and unconcerned.  Moving on, he lifted a set of pages into view, remarking, “Gun range scores.  Your practice records.”  He let that hang and Greg noticed Wordy’s increasing nerves.  Whatever was wrong, Wordy _had_ been noticing it, but why hadn’t he said anything?  “Your marksmanship is declining.”

Greg opened his mouth to interject and pull attention away from his constable, but his sixth sense surged and demanded silence.

After a few moments, Wordy claimed, “I haven’t had as much time to shoot.”

Without twitching a hair, Toth observed, “You’ve been putting in more time on the range.”

Greg’s heart sank.  Why hadn’t Wordy said anything?  But he knew the answer…between the unjust witch hunt of a Wizengamot trial and what had happened to Lance, Wordy, though supportive as ever, had withdrawn, becoming more and more private with his problems.  Still, enough was enough and this _was_ supposed to be a psych eval, not a physical.  “Wordy’s strength is entry,” Greg broke in firmly.  “He meets his marksmanship requirements.  A team is…”

Toth cut him off and finished, a touch irritably, “A team is the sum of its parts.  Yes, I know that, Sergeant.”  The psychologist pulled one of the papers in his hands out, held it out over the polygraph, and dropped it so that it fell on Wordy’s side of the table and the constable could see it.  “Is that your signature?”

After a quick look, Wordy replied, “Yeah.”

Another paper flicked across the distance and settled on top of the first; Greg’s heart sank further.  Maybe he could have caught this…maybe he could have _done_ something before Wordy’s problems were exposed by an outsider.  “And is that your signature?”

“Yeah.”  This one was more shaky; Wordy knew where Toth was going, even if Greg wasn’t quite sure yet.

“It’s getting smaller,” Toth remarked, his voice as calm as though he was remarking on the weather, rather than a man’s physical problems.

“Huh.”  No real response, though Greg’s ‘team sense’ churned with unhappiness and fear.

Toth struck, “Have any simple manual tasks become more of a challenge?”

“No.”  A faint stirring of confidence lapped at the ‘team sense’.

“Do you find yourself unaccountably impatient or irritable?”

“No.”  More confidence and Greg’s heart lifted, too.  If it hadn’t gotten bad yet, maybe they could still do something about it; magic had worked miracles before…

Toth continued his questioning.  “Do you sometimes have trouble remembering ordinary words?  When was the last time you had a full medical?”

Defensiveness surged up and the confidence vanished.  “My last medical was fine.”

Not to be deterred, Toth pressed, “When was it?”

“Two years ago.”  To Greg’s dismay, the polygraph reacted; why had Wordy lied?  Wordy flinched.  “Maybe three,” he admitted.

And Greg remembered that one…it had been perhaps three weeks before his team earned Auror status and Wordy’d been hit by his first curse…

* * * * *

_“Will any sign of those two curses show up if Wordy’s checked over by_ our _doctors?”_

_The Healer frowned, clearly surprised that anyone with access to_ magical _medical care would consider ‘Muggle’ doctors instead.  When Greg simply waited, eyebrows up, she replied, “I wouldn’t think that would be an issue, Auror Sergeant Parker, but I admit, I’m no expert.”_

_“Then they_ could _show up if he’s checked closely enough?” Greg pressed._

_“I can’t say yea or nay, sir,” the Healer confessed.  “I doubt it, but I simply don’t know for sure.”_

* * * * *

After that, Wordy had avoided full medicals…an avoidance that only grew more intense after being hit with the _Cruciatus_.  But the avoidance was, in hindsight, a horrid error, an awful decision…if Wordy _had_ gotten a full medical, could they have caught this?

Toth seemed unsurprised by Wordy’s evasive behavior.  Calmly, he instructed, “I’d like you to raise your hands like this for me.”  In demonstration, he lifted both arms and held them out in front, his palms down and his hands hovering side by side in the air.

Caught up in self-recriminations, Greg scowled and threw out a sarcastic, “Geez, what are you doing?”

Without turning, Toth snapped, “You’re here to observe, Sergeant.”

Resigned, Wordy brought up both hands and held them out in front.  Toth studied the movement and asked, “Are you aware that you raised your left hand faster than your right hand?”

Greg snapped to full attention, brown eyes hardening even as his constable replied with a quiet, “No.”

“Any sleep disorders, insomnia?”

“No.”

Toth smiled, like a predator who’s caught the scent of its prey.  “You’re thinking.  Let’s try that again.  Roses?”

Thrown off, it took Wordy a beat to catch up.  “Um, bouquet.”

“Wine.”

As Wordy responded, his hands started to come down; his hyper-alert Sergeant cringed internally.  “Bottle.”

“Your hands,” Toth chided.  Wordy snapped both hands back up.  “Any sleep disorders?”

“No.”  But another frisson of fear accompanied the denial and Greg knew better.

Toth didn’t respond either way, though Greg suspected the man knew Wordy had lied again. “Lower your arms.”  As Wordy gratefully brought his arms down, the psychologist pounced again.  “How do you explain your trouble with concentration?  Your unsteady hands, your slower cognitive response?”

Wordy’s response was jumbled and Greg found himself grateful for his negotiator mask and all the practice he’d had with his ‘team sense’, because Wordy was rapidly going from fearful to panicking, though he was somehow keeping most of it in check enough that the polygraph didn’t register it.  “I sleep fine.  I’m tired.  I have a three-and-a-half year old, I mean…”

Well aware he had Wordy between a rock and a hard place, Toth smiled and coaxed, “Let’s try that again.  You’re a little tired, because…”

Almost sullen, Wordy replied, “Because Ally keeps waking us up in the middle of the night.”

Toth’s smile turned humoring.  “Again?  Because…”

Greg suspected that Wordy might have tried stalling again if he hadn’t already figured out how pointless stalling was.  The words were dragged out, one at a time, with heavy fear beneath each one.  “Because sometimes it takes awhile to get to sleep,” Wordy admitted.

“Why?” Toth pressed.  “Things going through your mind?”

Looking like a man asked to dig his own grave, Wordy shrugged.  “Yeah, I guess.”

“About work?” Toth prodded.

Another shrug.  “Yeah, maybe.”

“Maybe?”

Greg was half-grateful and half-dismayed as Wordy’s defensiveness flared like a rocket.  “Look, it’s nothing.  It’s just, it’s Shel, it’s, it’s the girls, it’s just money.”

The observing Sergeant frowned; of the many things to worry about, Wordy was one of the few members of his team who _didn’t_ have to worry about money.  The Lestrange family might have been the scum of the earth, but they’d been _rich_ scum of the earth, so why was Wordy worrying about money?  Unless he’d decided not to touch the Lestrange fortune; Greg added another note to his mental ‘Wordy’ list.

In the meantime, Toth, having gotten what he wanted, finally offered a touch of sympathy.  “That’s a lot to cope with, a job, three kids, a mortgage.”

“Yeah, it is,” Wordy agreed, though he didn’t look up at his interrogator.

“But that’s not really what concerns me,” Toth remarked, his gaze direct and frank.  “Do you want to know what concerns me?”  There was a pause as Wordy looked up, fear glittering in his eyes.  “Raise your arms again,” Toth ordered.

Greg forced himself not to look away as Wordy, the proud, honorable Wordy, pleaded, “This job is the only thing I know how to do.”  It wasn’t true, Greg knew; Wordy was intelligent enough to be equal to any job he chose to do, but Team One was more than just a job…for _all_ of them.

Toth was implacable.  “Raise your arms.”

Wordy’s Sergeant watched as the constable raised his arms and felt his heart tremble…right along with Wordy’s trembling right hand.


	3. Fractured Heart

Ed took full advantage of the break between drills to get in close to Donna and start grilling her.  Something was up, something was wrong, and he intended to get to the bottom of why a routine requalify had turned into Team One under a microscope.  And when he found out who was gunning for his team, he and they were going to have _words_.

“So what did Holleran tell you?” Ed demanded.

“Nothing,” Donna claimed, but Ed didn’t buy it.  As her phone rang and Ed stared her down, she added, “Just talking results on the CQB.”

“What else?” Ed pressed; she knew something, he could feel it in his bones.

Donna’s ringing phone gave her a perfect excuse.  “Hold on,” she requested as she picked up.  “Yeah.”  She listened, then replied, “I’ll send him up.”  The blonde hung up and turned towards the nearby cluster of Team One constables.  “Spike!  You’re up.”

As Spike headed off, Ed stepped up the pressure and the intensity of his gaze.  “You’re not telling me something.”

Donna’s counterattack, though, caught the team leader off guard.  “You’ve been edgy all day,” she pointed out.  “Something you’re not telling me?”

He wasn’t ready to admit what was going on to her, so Ed opted for a hasty retreat and a change of plan.  If Donna wouldn’t tell him what was going on, maybe someone else _would_.  Without responding, Ed turned away and jogged after Spike.  Behind him, Donna joined the remainder of Team One, cooling down and getting ready for the next drill.

“What’s up with him?” Donna asked them.

“He’s been like that all week,” Sam informed her while Lou grimaced and looked away in the background; if the less-lethal specialist knew what the problem was, he wasn’t telling.

“You know why?” Donna asked the more talkative Sam.

“No.”  But even as Sam spoke, he looked at Jules and Lou, both of whom had matching unhappy looks on their faces.  Donna straightened up as he asked them, “What is it?”

Jules looked up at Lou, who shook his head, then back at Sam and Donna.  Softly, she explained, “Sophie gave him an ultimatum.  With the baby coming, he’s got to make a choice between SRU and the family.”

Donna stifled her dismayed whistle; a part of her had been looking forward to learning the ropes of the wizarding world from Team One…now it looked like Team One was going to fall apart before she got that chance…

* * * * *

As the barrier rose, Wordy wondered what his Sergeant was thinking right now.  It would be a perfect excuse, a perfect way to get rid of the ‘competition’ for the kids if Wordy suddenly lost his job thanks to an unexpected health issue…and why not?  After all, Sarge, just like the _rest_ of his team, hadn’t lifted a finger to stop that jerk Malfoy, hadn’t gotten him out of a lifetime prison sentence.  The constable pushed the thoughts away, but other ones crowded in, jeering at him and sneering that he was about to lose _everything_ , that he didn’t _deserve_ to be on Team One anymore.

The brunet walked down the ramp towards the locker room, hardly registering that Spike was coming up the ramp.  He didn’t even hear Spike’s, “Wordy!  How’d it go?”

Lost in his thoughts and self-pity, Wordy didn’t look up, didn’t respond.  But Spike wasn’t so easily deterred.  “Wordy!”

“What?” Wordy asked, half-sharp as he turned.

“How’d it go?” Spike asked, burying his alarm at the strange look on Wordy’s face; for a moment, he could’ve _sworn_ that Wordy’s eyes flashed in _resentment_.

“Fine.”

It was so obviously a lie that Spike could only stare as Wordy turned and stalked away; Ed, jogging up the ramp, was forced to dodge around Wordy as the brunet refused to get out of Ed’s way.  Spike, like the rest of his team, was already unhappy with an _outsider_ doing the psych evals, but now, seeing Wordy’s demeanor, Spike wondered if the team could _survive_ this particular outsider.  Maybe Toth had a reputation as a team-breaker because he took a team and tore them apart, one-by-one.

As Spike headed for the briefing room, his feet dragging, he scarcely noticed Ed’s cornering of Commander Holleran.  The team leader approached Holleran with a brisk, “Commander.”

Holleran looked up from what he was doing; he suspected he knew what Ed wanted, but he couldn’t give the team leader the information he wanted.  So instead, Holleran questioned, “What are you doing here, Ed?”

“We need to talk.”

* * * * *

“Rain.”

“Rainbow.”

“Cloud.”

“Silver.”

“Sky.”

“The limit.”

“Freedom?”

With a grin, Spike lobbied back a joking, “Feminine supplies.”  It drew a grin from his boss, even if Toth didn’t react except to make a note on his paper.

Without pausing, Toth returned, “Girlfriend.”

“Babycakes.”

“Bomb.”

In the back of his mind, he heard an explosion echoing…an explosion from _right_ where his best friend was.  Felt a flash of the tearing agony in his soul that the explosion had produced.

“Bomb,” Toth repeated calmly.

“Job.”  How Spike kept his voice steady, he didn’t know, but he did.

Toth reached forward and made a note on the polygraph paper, unconcerned by Spike’s churning emotions; Spike kept his eyes forward, not wanting to look over at Sarge.  He could go days, even weeks, without thinking about _that_ day, a feat made easier by the fact, the _truth_ , that Lou had _survived_ that nightmare, but having it dragged up by an unsympathetic outsider stung and scraped against still raw patches of his heart.

Steadily, calmly, Toth pulled a binder over and announced, “Critical Incident 1137.”

Though Spike had an inkling of which incident that was, he still volleyed, “Am I supposed to word-associate that?”

Toth didn’t even twitch.  “Multiple bombs across the city.  You want to tell me about it?”

No, he most certainly did _not_.  “You got the file.  You got the transcript.  You got the voice recording.”  All but the last few minutes.

 “I’ve got the facts,” Toth countered.  “It’s your experience of them I need.”  Glancing down at the binder, Toth read out words from a day Spike could not forget.  “1:37, Officer Scarlatti directs Officer Lou Young to approach third bomb.  Scarlatti, 1:43—‘Okay, Lou, three garbage bags.  Anything rigged if they move?’ ”

Just like that, Spike was sucked back to that day as, hunched over the second bomb, he listened to his best friend step on a land mine.  Lou’s, “I think I just stepped on a land mine,” rang in Spike’s head all over again and he reflexively hunched his shoulders.

Numbly, he explained, “The bomb was booby-trapped with a CR-38.  It’s a Russian bounding mine.”  Visions of how it could’ve played out danced in his head; moments re-lived a thousand times in his deepest, most private nightmares.

“And then what happened?”  Toth’s voice was utterly calm and Spike’s defensiveness flared.

“Why are we doing this?”  Lou had _survived_ , why was Toth dredging up the past and what _could_ have happened?

Toth didn’t relent.  Instead he started reading again, “Scarlatti, 2:52—‘Why is everyone standing around?  Let’s go!’ ”

And what had almost been Lou’s last words rang in Spike’s ears all over again.  “It’s gonna be okay.”

Numb, Spike heard himself say, “He thought that trying the weight transfer would, uh, take us both down.  So, uh…he was gonna step off it.”

“And then what happened?”

In his mind’s eye, Spike saw the young wizard – the young _Wild Mage_ – approach Lou and whisk him to safety in a blur of wind and magic; a feat that, only the week before, both Giles and Lance had admitted should have been impossible for any wizard not old enough to Apparate.  And if the now sixteen-year-old Lance was _still_ too young to Apparate, then the fifteen-year-old Lance hadn’t had a prayer of being able to Apparate…

Spike forced his churning emotions down and shrugged.  “One in a million shot,” he lied.

Toth might have pressed the point, but Boss finally cleared his throat and gave Toth a cautionary look.  For a moment, Spike watched as the two men faced off, then Toth’s face cleared in a bit of comprehension.  “A _classified_ one in a million shot?” he inquired.

“Yes,” Sarge confirmed in a clipped tone.

And hearing that, Spike realized all at once that he _hadn’t_ lied to Toth, _hadn’t_ lied to his parents…it really _had_ been a one in a million shot that had saved Lou’s life.  A shiver worked its way up Spike’s back.  He didn’t want to know this, he _didn’t_.  He wanted to go on believing that any wizard, regardless of age or skill, could have saved Lou, _just_ like Lance had…

And into his new turmoil came Toth’s next observation.  “But you didn’t think the weight transfer would fail.”  As Spike looked up, the psychologist added, “You’re not over it.”

Bitterness reeked as Spike retorted, “What do you think, hmm?  What’s the machine telling you?  I’m sorry, but with all due respect, what’s the point?  Huh?  Boss?”

“Doc.”  The Boss, trying to help, but he wasn’t…not when it was thanks to _him_ that Spike finally _knew_ how close Lou had come to death, magic or no magic; the depths of his own denial surprised the bomb tech…once he’d seen Lou alive, part of him had determinedly gone back to believing that they could’ve saved Lou, no matter what.  A part that, even now, wailed that they – _he_ – could’ve done it, no problem.

“You feel guilty?” Toth asked and Spike resisted the urge to tell him to shut up and go away.

Instead, the tech stared at the table; no, of course he didn’t feel guilty…Lou was _alive_ , why should he feel guilty…  That was when he heard himself say, “Yeah, I feel guilty.”

The lovely thing about denial was that he’d been able to go about his life without drowning in guilt…guilt for not being good enough, fast enough, smart enough; _he_ , Michelangelo ‘Spike’ Scarlatti, was the team’s bomb tech, not Lou.  It should have been _him_ on that damned land mine…it should have been _him_ …but it hadn’t been.  And grief and guilt might have swallowed him _that day_ , but then Sarge and Ed had all but picked him up and carried him around the truck…and there Lou was; his best friend still alive and there and solid and not dead and…

And…and _he_ hadn’t saved Lou – a half-pint kid had.  “How do you feel now when you get a bomb call?” the oh-so-calm-and-cool Toth asked.

Distress ratcheted up to a whole new level, so hard and fast that Spike heard his Sergeant’s brief, sharp intake of air – any defense the man might have offered choked off by the ‘team sense’ and Spike’s swirling, frenetic emotions.  Spike felt a vice squeeze his chest and it took a conscious effort to remember that Lou was still alive, took a conscious effort to remember his last bomb call…

Toth studied him, then clearly decided that Spike wasn’t going to respond to his question.  Naturally, he took that as license to keep poking and prodding.  “You almost lost a partner,” he observed; Spike flinched.  “You almost lost a best friend, too, right?  Let me ask you this: You almost lose your best friend.  It’s three in the afternoon.  How do you spend the rest of your day?”

Dully, Spike replied, “We debriefed.”

“After that.”

After that, the Sarge had reluctantly made him sit down with the transcript and everything else and pull Lance’s involvement out of them to store separately.  When he’d finished that, he’d been wrung out and drained, the weight of what _could have happened_ bearing down on him as if it _had_.  The tech wondered, in hindsight, if he might have avoided all the nightmares and ‘what-if’ scenarios if he’d dropped in at Lou’s place instead of…

“That’s personal,” he sparked at Toth, unable to help himself; it was too close, too raw.

Insinuation rang in Toth’s voice as he drawled, “How well you handle this job is personal.”

Defeat bathed Spike’s frame and his eyes found the table yet again.  “I went home.”

* * * * *

_He walked in the front door of his house, the numbness almost a physical encumbrance, coating him in shock and, in his heart, Lou was alive one second and dead the next; it had been so close, so horribly close, and he could still hear the mine’s explosion echoing in his head.  His head came up and he couldn’t help but stare as his mother smiled at him from her spot in the kitchen, slicing red peppers for supper._

_“Mikey,” she greeted him warmly._

_A good day for her then, but Spike felt something in his chest wrench; didn’t she know?  Didn’t she know what had almost happened?  He heard his mother ask something frantically in their native Italian, but the brave front he’d been putting up since seeing Lou_ alive _finally cracked in two.  Tears slipped down his face and he heard his mother hurry over, felt her arms come around him fiercely._

_“Mikey!” his mother cried, trying her best to comfort him._

_Spike let her hold him and wondered vaguely why he was crying.  Lou was alive; why was he crying?  But he couldn’t seem to stop and it wasn’t until the storm was over that he was finally able to tell his mother what had happened._

 “You live with your mother.”

“I live with my parents,” Spike corrected softly.

_Dinner that night was almost dead silent; Spike picked at his food, still numb and struggling to recover his emotional balance after nearly losing his best friend.  For once, his mother hadn’t used the day’s events as a wedge to get Spike to quit his job, though Spike suspected it was a temporary reprieve at best.  Lost in his thoughts, Spike didn’t realize his father had picked up his glass until he tried to set it down and his hand shook so much that the red wine spilled on the tablecloth._

_As his mother cried out in reflexive dismay, Spike sprang up and announced, “I got it!  I got it!”  As Spike snatched up a nearby cloth to wipe up the mess, his mother anxiously called instructions.  “Aah,” Spike returned as he worked, not even looking up._

_“_ Basta **(1)** _!”  Out of the corner of his eye, Spike saw his father block his mother’s attempt to reach over and help._

_“I got it, I got it, I got it, Ma!”_

_In a sharp tone, his father snapped, “_ Basta _!” again; both Spike and his mother froze at the patriarch’s bark._

_Slowly, laboriously, Dominic Scarlatti rose to his feet, glaring at Spike; Spike resisted the urge to cringe from his father’s fury.  When he spoke, every word felt like another bullet through Spike’s already torn and bleeding heart.  “Every day, this is my life.  Waiting for the phone to ring.  The officer at the door, eh?  You bring this into our house.”_

_Spike’s fists clenched of their own accord.  “He didn’t die, Pa,” now if only he could make himself believe that his father’s fears were baseless, “and I don’t think now is the time, okay?”  No, he needed time, time to convince himself that this would never happen again, that none of his team would die like Lou almost had.  Time to build a wall between himself and the day’s horrid, horrid events, so he never had to think about them again._

_“Sit down, please…” Michelina Scarlatti pleaded with her son and husband._

_His father didn’t even seem to hear the plea.  “Every day, you go out there, and you, you play the hero.”_

_Outrage flared, faster and hotter than any of the bombs that day.  “Play?” Spike demanded incredulously.  “What, you think this is a game?”_

_Though Spike saw his father’s face twist in sorrow, he was too numb to respond to it.  “Today,” Dominic whispered, “your friend cheats the Reaper, but tomorrow, my son does not.”_

_It was the wrong thing to say; Spike knew it as soon as he said it, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care. “One day we all die, okay?”_

_With a frustrated cry, the old man threw up his hands and left, ignoring his dinner, his weeping wife, and his hurting, half-grieving son.  Spike hurled his final words at his father’s back.  “At least you try and make it mean something!  Pa!”_

_As tension swirled in the dining room, Spike stared at his mother and looked at the hallway his father had disappeared down.  All at once, the fight went out of him and he sat down hard, staring at the table and wishing, bitterly, that none of the day’s events had ever happened._

* * * * *

Spike still stared at the table, unwilling to look up at his boss or the uncaring Toth.  Without a flicker of _real_ concern, Toth asked, “You patch things up with your father?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Didn’t the idiot understand how his family worked?  “Because he won’t,” Spike replied flatly.  How many times had he tried, only to see his father walk away and give him the cold shoulder?

“Why?”

Spike traced a pattern on the table; ironic, how life worked.  “He’s sick.”

“Sick?”

Ironic because his father had actually given him the time of day when ‘Lanna Calvin had gotten sick herself, only to turn away again as soon as she got better; that was when Spike had finally understood.  “He’s dying,” Spike reported dully.

“Spike…” the Boss whispered, sympathy aching.

The bomb tech wished, as he had many times before, that his father was more like the Boss; willing to support you even if he didn’t agree with everything you did.  If Toth hadn’t been there, Spike might have explained more, told his boss about his father’s reaction to Alanna’s illness and the things Spike himself had figured out from that reaction.

But Toth _was_ there, already questioning, “That’s why you won’t patch things up?”

To share the whole with a callous stranger was something Spike would _not_ do, so he focused on the bottom line.  “No,” Spike refuted, shaking his head and still staring down.  “He won’t patch things up until I quit this job.  Until I quit SRU.”

* * * * *

“Orange.”

“Juice.”

“Shield.”

“Cover.”

“Hot.”

“Call.”

“Bomb.”

“Spike.”

Lou watched as Toth paused, shuffling through his notes.  “Critical Incident 1137.”

Oh, boy.  Lou wasn’t stupid; he’d seen first Wordy, then Spike come out looking like they’d been hit upside the head with a baseball bat.  Usually, Lou didn’t know their calls by their incident numbers, but he had a sneaking suspicion with this particular number.  Even so, Lou opted to hold back, studying the psychologist instead of answering.

Toth returned the stare, then gave a slight smile as he tilted his head in acknowledgement of Lou’s tack.  “Multiple bombs,” the psychologist elaborated, “And a booby-trap by the last one.”

“Actually,” Lou deadpanned, “There were five mines around the last bomb.”

Another slight smile.  “Quite,” Toth remarked thoughtfully.  For a moment, the room, save for the clicking of the polygraph machines, was silent.  Then Toth inquired, “How did it feel, to know one wrong move would result in your death?”

Lou stiffened; for a moment, he was there, struggling to hold the position he’d been standing in for what felt like hours, straining to stay still long enough for Spike to get away.  He felt hands come down on his shoulders and magic whirl him away from certain death.  Resigned to death, resigned to sacrificing himself to save his friends, it had been a shock all its own when he’d survived the impossible.

“I did what I had to do,” Lou replied evenly, meeting the other man’s gaze squarely.  “To get that bomb disabled and out of there.”

“And yet, when it came to getting _youself_ out of there, you were…less willing,” Toth almost purred.

Lou looked down, feeling the despair when Spike had found the glued safety pin hole in the land mine.  “Spike thought a weight transfer might work, but I heard Sam.  It wouldn’t have worked; we would’ve both died if Spike tried.”

“And yet, here you are,” Toth observed.

“Dr. Toth.”  The Sarge’s voice was soft, but held grim warning and promise.

Toth accepted the rebuke without even turning towards the observing Sergeant.  Leaning back in his chair, he inquired, “And what did you do afterwards?”

“After the debrief?” Lou counter-inquired.

“Yes.”

One shoulder lifted in a shrug.  “Went home.”

* * * * *

_Lou walked in the door of his apartment and shut the door behind him.  Once it was shut, he sagged against the wood as the last dregs of adrenaline faded; he wasn’t sure he’d ever been this tired, this wrung out, this utterly exhausted.  Before he quite knew it, he was sitting on the shag carpet of his apartment, gasping for air as shock crashed down on him again.  Shivers wracked his tall frame as his entire body reacted to nearly dying._

_Time passed as Lou sat against his door, shaking and shivering in reaction to his ordeal.  When his phone rang, he looked up and stared at it as if it had dropped out of the sky.  The phone rang again, shrilling into the silence and Lou hauled himself up with a groan.  He trudged to the phone and picked it up before it could ring again.  “Hello?”_

_“Lewis?”_

_“Mom?”_

_To Lou’s shock, his mother started to cry, great wailing sobs of relief.  “Oh, thank God.  When your father said you called and the news showed that awful explosion, I was so afraid for you, baby.”  Lou hung his head, but his mother wasn’t done.  “Please, Lewis, tell me that wasn’t you.  Tell me it wasn’t.”_

_The words fell like stones.  “It was, Mom,” Lou admitted.  His head came back and he stared up at his ceiling, tears glimmering in his eyes.  “It was me.”_

_“No,” his mother whispered.  “You’re alive; we saw the footage.  No one could have survived that.”_

_The tan-skinned constable drew in a shaky breath, feeling a phantom wind whip around him again, words he couldn’t understand hissing in his ear.  “I guess, I guess it wasn’t my time,” he managed.  “Please, don’t ask how, Mom.  Just accept it.”_

_His mother stilled.  “But_ you _know how?”_

_“Yes.”_

_The phone line went quiet.  Then, slowly, his mother asked, “Son, have I ever told you about the time your grandmother met the Chartreuse Fox?”_

_Lou blinked in puzzlement.  “No, I don’t think so,” he replied, his confusion lurking in his voice._

_“I didn’t think I had,” his mother murmured.  “The next time I come down, I’ll tell you the story, I promise.  I think it’s time I told you that one.”_

* * * * *

Lou frowned inwardly; his mother never _had_ told him that story or else he’d have recognized the name when Lance said it.  He didn’t let the frown touch his face, though; Toth would pounce on it in a second.

“So your relationship with your family is good?” Toth inquired.

“Yes,” Lou allowed tightly, making it clear he didn’t appreciate the prying.  Although, truth be told, the day he’d almost died wasn’t the day that haunted his nightmares.  No, his nightmares were reserved for two _other_ events: Spike’s near death at the Isle of the Blessed and his Sarge’s imprisonment in the Netherworld.  Fortunately, Toth knew about neither event, so Lou was fairly confident that the worst was over, at least for him, anyway.

Sure enough, Lou was permitted to leave shortly thereafter, almost waved away by Toth as the man focused on his next victims…er…interviewees.

* * * * *

Even as irritated as he was, Ed tried to pull back and lead things in politely – well, as politely as the already ticked off team leader could.  “Look,” he began, meeting Commander Holleran’s gaze, “We’ve always run on transparency here.  No politics, no…”

“Ed!”

Message received.  Ed skipped the rest of his speech.  “If you’re gunning to take my team apart, then you owe me a reason why,” the team leader growled.

“This is not just about you,” Holleran countered calmly.

As a phone rang nearby, Ed questioned, “Then who’s it about?”

“You are out of line,” Holleran snapped, making it clear the conversation was over, but Ed wasn’t about to surrender, not until he knew the truth.

“Sir, you are not answering the question,” Ed protested as Winnie’s phone rang again in the background.

To Ed’s further frustration, Holleran stuck with the party line.  “I told you, your team is--”

“Ed!” Winnie called from her desk.

“Winnie, not now!” Ed called back, his eyes on Holleran.

Winnie’s next words drove all thoughts of work straight out of his head.  “Ed, it’s Sophie.  She just went into labor.”

 

[1] Italian for ‘enough’


	4. Wedge in the Cracks

“Soph, I’m sorry,” Ed said into the phone, as focused on his wife as he had been on his team’s troubles.  “I was in the shoot house, I missed the calls.”  Distantly, he hoped she wouldn’t hold that against him like she seemed to hold everything SRU against him these days.  “Okay…  How far apart?  Okay, how long?  Okay.”  At Sophie’s next half-accusing comment, he shot back, “No, Sophie, of course I’m coming.  Okay.  Bye, I love you.”

Even as Ed handed the phone back to Winnie and turned to pack up, Holleran appeared out of nowhere.  “Ed?”

A minute ago, Ed would have loved to have had the Commander’s undivided attention, but not _now_.  “You heard that, right?  My wife’s in labor?”

“That’s great, but I can’t let you go--”

“I’m gonna requalify later.”

Holleran’s next words brought Ed to a halt.  “Without you being here, today’s tests are meaningless!”

Ed snapped around, growling, “That makes no sense.”

Holleran drew in a breath.  “This is not about individual performance.  This is about the fabric of the team.”

Of all the times to get answers…  “What are you saying?” Ed demanded.

Bluntly Holleran explained, “The team configuration’s being tested.”

“So we reschedule!” Ed burst out; what was the big deal about _today_?

“Dr. Toth has a limited window of availability.”

And that was supposed to be a downside?  “Great.  Get someone else.”

“Can’t be done,” _what?_ “And if you don’t requalify, I am not authorized to clear Team One for duty.”  Ed stared at his Commander in sheer disbelief.  What the _heck_ was going on?  “She just started labor, right?”

The words dragged out.  “About an hour ago.”

Incredulity ratcheted up as Commander Holleran remarked, “Well, you’ll be there in plenty of time.”  Ed’s staring increased as his boss’s boss added, “We’ll get you in and out.  One hour.  I know this is asking a lot.”

He’d promised Sophie he was on his way, but was this the way he wanted to leave the team?  Leave them in the lurch with no clearance?  If he had to leave, Ed had hoped to leave on a higher note than this.  “Okay,” he decided.

“Okay?”  Something about the way Holleran was looking at him was off, but Ed couldn’t change his mind now.

“One hour,” Ed growled, making it clear that was _not_ negotiable, “And I’m gone.”

* * * * *

Jules eyed Toth, determined to keep him as off balance as possible; she’d seen Wordy and Spike after their own evaluations and Toth had reduced two of the strongest men she knew to half-quivering wrecks.  He wasn’t going to do it to her.

Smoothly, Toth remarked, “I need to establish a baseline for you.  Tell me three truths and a lie.  In that order.”

Fair enough.  “My name’s Julianna Callaghan.  I’m 36.  I’m from Medicine Hat, Alberta.  And I love quilting.”

“Thank you, Julianna.  Now some word association.”

Time to fight back.  “Stream of consciousness.”

“That’s right.”

“That’s left.”

He smiled.  “You started without me.”

“Try to keep up.”  Sarge’s soft chuckle and pleased brown eyes at her spunk gratified the constable, but she stayed focused on Toth.

“Country.”

“Horizon.”

“Sky.”

“Sunrise.”

“Bedtime.”

“Story.”

“Sam Braddock.”

His smile, his scent, the thousand little tricks they’d used to keep their team from finding out.  Sarge, dropping the hammer and looking so disappointed in her that her insides squirmed at their betrayal of his trust.  And the little nudges and prods from her heart since then, each one pointing out how _unfair_ it was to keep her and Sam apart, how _wrong_ it was that Sarge had his kids to love, but wouldn’t let her and Sam love each other.

“What do you want to know?” Jules asked calmly.

* * * * *

Three truths and a lie…easy enough.  “My name is Sam Braddock.  I have two sisters.  I served in the military.  I like the mellow sounds of easy rock.”

A brief smile from the silver-haired man.  “Good.  Word association.  Friend.”

“Trust.”

* * * * *

Wordy pushed himself harder and faster, determination flowing through his pumping arms and legs as he leapt down from the beam and threw himself at the tires, Spike right on his heels.  He had to do this, had to redeem himself from that utter mess of a psych eval; he couldn’t lose this job, it was all he had.

* * * * *

“Hand,” Toth snapped out.

“Touch,” the blond sniper returned.

“Grip.”

“Seize.”

* * * * *

Wordy hurled himself at the climbing wall, boots landing solidly on the first bar.  His heart thudded as he brought one boot up to the second bar and grabbed the top of the obstacle; for an instant, it held, then the bar broke and his body swung down.  Wordy heard Spike’s yelp of pain as his teammate, halfway through his own leap at the obstacle, latched onto the broken bar and let go, blood already flowing from the gash on his left hand.

The brunet constable hauled himself over and looked back briefly before turning to plunge on.  Behind him, Spike’s yell of, “Ahh!  Wordy!” rose and he stopped.

For an instant, he considered ignoring his teammate, but then he turned back, judging Spike’s position before reaching down and grabbing Spike’s hand to haul him up and over.  “Come on,” Wordy grunted, “Let’s go, man.”

* * * * *

Smoothly, Toth moved on from word association with the blond constable.  “I’d like to pick up on the sensitive circumstances of your departure from the Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan.”

Sam stiffened, but answered calmly, “I fired the fatal shot during an incident of friendly fire.  I haven’t made a secret of it.”

More to the Boss than to Sam, Toth observed, “I see Sam’s application into Team One was processed quickly.”

“He was fast-tracked, yes,” the Boss allowed.

As Sam looked on, Toth continued, “SRU teams generally select their new members as a group.  I gather the decision in Sam’s case was more top-down.”

“That’s right,” Sarge confirmed and Sam felt his insides writhe for an instant.  He didn’t regret joining _this_ team, but it was true that his joining hadn’t exactly been…kosher.

* * * * *

“How did the team respond to that?” Toth inquired smoothly of Jules.

Without a flicker of regret, Jules lied.  “Sam had our full support.”  And if Sarge got mad at her for lying, well, wasn’t this situation partly _his_ fault?

* * * * *

_“Why don’t you just tase his ass?” the uptight rookie they hadn’t chosen demanded._

_Without even looking up, Ed countered, “Muscle spasm, he’ll pull the trigger.”_

_“So we go in hard tactical.”_

_Listening in, Jules wondered again why they’d been saddled with the blond.  Sure, he was good looking and a greater shot, but it took more than tactics to make it in the SRU.  Ed seemed to agree because he pulled out a ploy Jules had been half-expecting since Braddock started shooting his mouth off._

_“There’s something I need you to do,” Ed announced, pulling a map over for Braddock to see.  Eager, Braddock leaned in as Ed traced a route on the map.  “All right, see these stairs, here?” Ed inquired, pointing them out; Jules smirked to herself.  “That’s where we came in, right?  Need you to make reverse entry.  Go across this hallway, these doors here, I need you to go through them.”  Without cracking a grin even as Braddock’s head came up warily, Ed continued, “Now be careful, because that is a big road.  I want you to cross it.  I want you to make an entry into this Timmy’s.  I’ll have a double-double.  Jules?”_

_Braddock’s disappointment was tangible and Jules restrained a laugh.  “Cream, no sugar,” she called._

_“Spike?”_

_From his spot next to one of the hospital employees, Spike grinned.  “Nah, I’m good.”_

* * * * *

“And we responded with courtesy and professionalism,” Jules finished her lie smoothly, avoiding disappointed brown eyes.  Maybe if Sarge had kept it together, they wouldn’t be in this situation in the _first_ place.

* * * * *

“Why did your father have to intervene personally to facilitate your entry?”

Sam’s brief flash of a smile was bitter.  Ironic, that; his father, the force behind his entry onto Team One, now despised that same team – and his son – with a passion because of their magic-side involvement.  “Ask my father.  Ask Commander Holleran.  It was between them.”

Incredulous, Toth asked the Boss, “It was General Braddock who forced him here after leaving Special Ops under a cloud?”

The sniper stiffened.  “There was no ‘cloud’,” he spat.  “And I wasn’t forced.”

Toth wasn’t buying Sam’s story at all.  Insinuation rang in his voice.  “The Strategic Response Unit: ‘Connect, Respect, Protect,’ talk before tactics.  Curious career choice for a military man.”  He let that hang before continuing, “Darren Kovacs.  Ex-hockey player back from Afghanistan.  Decides to protect the Godwin Coliseum from demolition.  Single-handed.”

* * * * *

_“See you on the other side.”  Again, he backed up, almost smiling as the stone gave under his boots._

_“_ Sam, no! _” the raven-haired man screamed as he started to fall, lunging forward and latching onto his good arm with a strength that surprised the soldier._

_What was he_ doing _?  He wasn’t strong enough to pull Sam up by himself; they’d_ both _fall and die…  Sam started struggling, trying to get the other to let go, the strangely familiar man who felt like a friend one minute and a stranger the next; he didn’t deserve to die for Sam’s sins._

_“Sam, stop,” the raven pleaded, clinging even tighter to Sam, his grip like a vice around Sam’s wrist.  “Come on, buddy; I can’t hold you if you keep squirming like this.”_

_In a dead voice, with deader eyes, Sam looked up and ordered, “Then let go.”_

_Shock flared in the numbness as the other man gritted out, “Not happening.”  Why?  Why was he worth dying for?  He’d betrayed his unit twice over; he_ deserved _to die._

_And in the distance, another man yelled, “Spike!  Hang on!  We’re coming!”_

* * * * *

Sam stiffened, his emotions smashing into Greg one right after the other.  Numbness, fear, guilt, grief.  The Sergeant braced himself, judging the sniper for one precious instant; with only a flicker of hesitation, he reversed his ‘team sense’, letting himself act as _Sam’s_ anchor.  _Come on, Sam; we’re here for you._

Blue eyes blinked hard, then flicked in Greg’s direction and, to the Sergeant’s relief, Sam pulled in a steadying breath, his emotions stabilizing before Toth’s polygraph could read his extreme distress.  Greg left the reversing on for another second, then flicked it off before his team could get overwhelmed.  Then the Sergeant inspected both polygraph machines, holding his breath.  Both read a reaction, but nowhere near as bad as they should have read.  His idea had worked.

* * * * *

“Did he say he was quitting?” Toth inquired, a simple question, but one Jules couldn’t help resenting.

“Yes, he did say he was quitting,” Jules conceded.  “But everybody has those days.  We showed him that he was wrong and that he belonged.  We never doubted that.”

That day had been awful, but the next week had been torture, fear for Sam and, later, Spike raging in her heart.  If Sam had chosen to walk away after they’d rescued him, Jules wasn’t sure if they could’ve talked him out of it – wasn’t sure if she would have been _willing_ to talk him out of it.  That they – _she_ – hadn’t lost Sam had been a miracle.

“Did you fight to keep him close for personal reasons?”

Jules stiffened; did he _know_?  Then she realized, of course he knew.  Sarge hadn’t bounced either her or Sam off Team One, but he _had_ given them both verbal and written reprimands for their behavior, along with a stern warning not to violate SRU policy again.  Reprimands that had gone in their files…files that Toth had access to.  Indignation roared in her heart, indignation at both Sarge and Toth for putting her and Sam in this position, but she was careful not to show it.

Without so much as a flicker in her face, she replied, “Say what you’re saying, Doc.”

* * * * *

Wordy leapt off the last obstacle, throwing the two rams in his hands aside as he let himself sag to the ground, panting hard; nearby, Donna checked her stopwatch and Ed observed from right next to her.

“3:02, Wordy,” Donna called.

The brunet heard Spike’s thud to the ground and gasp of pain as he went down, curling around his injured hand.  He didn’t look up; resentment curdled in his belly and fought past the barriers that Wordy normally used to keep it contained.

Stuffing it down again, Wordy started to shrug out of his backpack as Donna called out, “3:08, Spike.  Not bad.”

Spike tossed Wordy a glare as he started squirming out of his own backpack and snapped, “Yeah, those last ten seconds weren’t mine.”

Wordy ignored the jab as Ed asked, “What are you talking about, Spike?”

“Nothing, Ed.”  A shade of resentment lurked in Spike’s voice and Wordy felt his own rise up again, practically begging to be let loose.  He pulled out two water bottles and held one out to Spike, but his hand shook…and not because of a health problem.

“Spike.”  An expectant, warning growl from their team leader.

“Nothing,” Spike flared back, giving Wordy another glare and refusing to take the offered water bottle.

Instead, he dug his own out as Wordy questioned, “What?”

“Would it have killed you, Word,” Spike demanded in an undertone, pulling his water bottle close.  “I was right there, three feet away.”

Defensiveness rose, joining and compounding the bitterness.  “What do you mean?” Wordy demanded.  “I helped you over.”  _Which is a heck of a lot more than_ you _did for me._

“Yeah, you thought about it a good, long time first,” Spike jabbed.

And just like that, the bitterness and resentment he’d nursed ever since the Wizengamot trial debacle exploded.  “Just like _you_ guys thought about it a good, long time before you came after me!”

Spike, in the middle of opening the water bottle, froze, his head snapping up to Wordy.  “What?”  Confusion rang in his voice, confusion Wordy didn’t buy for a _minute_.

“Oh, come on,” Wordy spat.  When Spike continued to stare in confusion, Wordy dropped his voice lower and hissed, “ _Lestrange_.”

Horrified realization shone in Spike’s eyes and he jerked backwards, almost spilling the water bottle as his injured hand closed reflexively.  Wordy’s bitterness spiraled higher at the shocked look on his teammate’s face.

Each word was low, but hurled with all the force of Wordy’s hurt and resentment.  “None of you did _anything_ , and _now_ you’re surprised that I’m looking out for myself?”  Gray eyes glittered with impotent fury and heartbroken betrayal in equal measure.  “I still helped you over the top of that climb.”

Spike’s jaw worked soundlessly as he stared, then he yelped as he closed his left hand too hard and accidently drove the splinters deeper into the injury.  Wordy couldn’t find it in himself to care as the bomb tech fought back tears of pain.

“I don’t have your choices,” Wordy snarled, “I have to look out for _myself_ and _my_ family.”

“Enough!” Ed roared from right behind him; Wordy jumped and whirled, almost falling over in shock at the anger on Ed’s face.

But he couldn’t stop.  “None of you lifted a _finger_ to help me!” he yelled back, scrambling up to confront his team leader face-to-face.  “The _one_ time I needed you guys to have _my_ back and _none_ of you had it!”

“You think Onasi came up with the stuff he said at Skeeter’s trial all by his lonesome?” Ed asked sarcastically.  “Who do you think pulled the pictures of Skeeter’s Animagus form off the SRU’s security cameras, ‘cause it sure wasn’t an Auror who can barely dial a cell phone.”

Now it was Wordy’s turn to stare; he gaped at Ed, slowly looking between him and Spike.

“Who do you think came up with Potter’s little speech right before you took that oath thing?” Ed drove on, scant mercy in his face.  “I’ll even give you a little hint: it was the same guy I had to practically bash over the head ‘cause he was halfway to Timbuktu on a guilt trip before I caught him.”  The team leader stepped forward, right into Wordy’s space; the brunet swallowed, fighting the urge to back up at the outrage in Ed’s eyes.  “So, tell me, Wordy; would it have felt better if we’d gotten you back only to have Sarge turn in his badge ‘cause he let you down?”

“What?” Wordy choked out, too numb to say anything else; behind him, Spike squeaked in alarm – apparently, only Ed had known about Sarge.

“That’s what he was headed for before I cut him off at the pass,” Ed snapped.  “Oh, he might’ve been busy writing a formal letter of apology to you when I caught him, but I _guarantee_ you, the letter of resignation was next.”  The team leader stopped, pulling back, then changed his mind and leaned in closer, so close that Wordy squirmed; any closer and their noses would touch.  “And maybe we wouldn’t have reacted so badly if you _hadn’t been keeping secrets!_ ”

Wordy swallowed harshly, almost gagging on his pride, bitterness, and resentment; shame swamped him and the only reason he didn’t look away was because Ed’s furious gaze refused to let him.  It was true…he _had_ been keeping secrets; he hadn’t _wanted_ them to know…hadn’t wanted them to know he was a child of rape, sired by a family of monsters.

But secrets had nearly been their downfall…nearly taken Sarge’s life and soul in one fell swoop…and how many hot calls were caused by secrets?  Infidelity, abuse, grief – the list went on, but so many calls could have been avoided if people hadn’t kept secrets from their friends and family; he should have known better.  And…  “You helped?”

Ed jerked back at the small, hurt question.  The anger left him in a rush and Wordy suddenly saw how stressed and exhausted his best friend was.  “Yeah, Wordy, we did.  Jules came up with ‘Lanna’s disguise, Spike and Lou helped her track down Fawkes, Lance plotted out that last ditch plan with Silnok, and the rest of us came up with the case against Skeeter.”

He might have said more, but Spike broke in with a quiet, “I’m sorry, Wordy.”  Both men froze and Wordy turned, bit by bit, to face his raven-haired teammate.  “We shouldn’t have let that jerk take you without a fight,” Spike finished, looking down and absently rubbing at his injured hand.

For a moment, Wordy felt more numb than ever before, then warmth flooded him; the ice of his resentment and bitterness melted away under the sun of the care and regard his team had for him – it hadn’t gone anywhere, he realized.  He’d pulled back from his team and they’d let him, sensing his hurt and wanting to give him space to deal with it…what _he_ had seen as them abandoning him over and over again had been nothing of the sort, but, in his own bitterness, _he’d_ abandoned _them_.

Gray eyes fell to Spike’s hand and air rasped against his throat.  He hadn’t _meant_ to break the wooden step on the obstacle, but he had and that, in turn, had hurt Spike; he’d almost left Spike behind, to boot.  He couldn’t take back what he’d done, but what if he could show he wouldn’t do it again?  If he could fix what he’d broken in his anger…but how?  An idea occurred…one Wordy wasn’t sure would even work; regardless of if it did or didn’t, he’d hurt himself…he’d have to do the rest of the tests with a splitting headache and nagging exhaustion.

Gritting his teeth and refusing to think of what the rest of the day was going to be like, Wordy reached for his small, inactive magical core and focused on Spike’s hand, whole and unharmed.  Keeping that image in his mind, Wordy stepped towards his teammate and grabbed Spike’s injured hand, as if to inspect it.  Spike tried to jerk back, but Wordy held on, even as his head started to throb and exhaustion rammed into him like a two-by-four.  _Come on, come on…don’t make this for nothing…_

From the side, he heard Donna’s gasp and felt Ed’s stunned stare, compounded by Spike’s gawp, as the splinters pulled free on their own and the flesh started to knit itself together, leaving nothing behind but traces of dried blood.  Wordy blinked, grimacing at his headache and the sting of sweat falling in his eyes.  The healing paused, then started up again as Wordy thrust his stubborn will at his crippled magic.  Slowly, painstakingly, Spike’s injury closed over, leaving unmarked skin behind.  When the last of it faded and not even a scar remained to mark where the gash had been, Wordy let Spike’s hand go, feeling light-headed and drained on top of the throbbing, angry headache.

“There,” he remarked, trying to act as if he healed his teammates’ injuries all the time.  “That’s better.”  Dimly, Wordy wondered why the world was starting to spin.  He heard Ed, Spike, and Donna call his name; saw Spike lunge at him right as the world turned black.


	5. Betrayals

“Have you ever witnessed any friction within the team?” Toth asked silkily.

Sam gave the psychologist a shrug, saying, “All families have friction.”

It was the wrong thing to say; Toth stared at him and demanded, “Is this a family or a SWAT team?”  _Ouch._   Without waiting for a reply, Toth read from the transcript in front of him, “Critical Incident 1077.  Knife call, two women, alleged infidelity.  Callaghan, 11:06—‘Boss, threat is low.  I can do this.’ ”

The sniper cringed; his first negotiation and it hadn’t ended well.  The hostage, upon realizing that the husband of the subject loved his wife more than her, had turned on the subject, going berserk with fury and attacking her rival; she’d wrestled the knife away and stabbed the subject before Team One could make entry.  Jules had been _furious_ , since, only minutes earlier, there had been an opening to go in and end the situation; Sam had argued against it and Sarge, in charge of tactics, had sided with the call’s negotiator.

It hadn’t been his first _rough_ call, but it _had_ been the first call where Sam had seen his new team fight over events and their decisions, with half the team on his and Sarge’s side and the other half demanding to know how _Ed_ would have handled the tactical call.

“It was a tough call,” Sam admitted.

“It was tough because…?” Toth demanded.

“We were making split-second decisions,” Sam bit back, “And there was no easy right or wrong.”

Flatly, grimly, Toth countered, “And because in the midst of all this, you and Jules Callaghan were involved.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.  My personal notes on my team are confidential,” Sarge broke in, anger and alarm in his eyes; Sam squirmed, but was smart enough to stay quiet.

“Well, technically, no, they’re not patients,” Toth drawled.

Sarge leaned forward, eyes flashing.  “Parts of my personal notes are _classified_ ,” he growled, “Since they deal with events that occurred during _classified_ calls.”

“You keep those notes in a separate notebook,” Toth volleyed back.  “Commander Holleran insured that I was only provided with your non-classified notes.”  Annoyance flashed in his eyes and both SRU officers knew he resented being deprived of information.

As the moment hung, Sam admitted, “Yes, we were seeing each other.”

Toth swung back to his primary target.  “Two weeks after that argument, Callaghan was almost shot.  The two of you had been working together.”

* * * * *

_One minute, he was racing for Jules, his heart pounding in fear, and the next, an animal shriek rang out and fire erupted from the rooftop, soaring meters high to his right; the sniper almost skidded to a halt in shock, but threw himself forward even faster, praying for speed.  He didn’t hear the shot, but he_ did _hear the ricochet as the subject’s shot hit the wall instead of Jules.  Then he was by Jules, covering them_ both _with the shield._

_“What the heck was that?” he yelled, eyes wide as he stared around the shield at the violet flames dancing a bare meter away from them.  If the fire spread, while they were pinned down…  He shut that line of thought down and shook his head fiercely._

_Over the comm, Ed roared, “_ Status? _”_

_Jules responded before he could.  “We’re okay,” she reassured their teammates.  Sam bit back a sigh of relief; Jules was fine.  But before he could celebrate, she gasped in pain._

_“Jules?” Sam queried, worry lacing every syllable._

_Instead of directly responding to him, Jules reported, “Ed, I think I twisted my ankle.  Probably when I dove for cover and that whatever it was showed up.”_

_Sam knew a cue when he heard one.  Before Ed or Sarge could ask, he added, “You were yelling for us to get to cover and something showed up.”  He drew a quick breath and tacked on, “Looked like some kind of flying_ fireball _…it ran a line of flames right between us and where that shot came from.”_

_“Flying fireball?” Sarge asked, sounding bemused by the description._

_Jules and Sam traded looks behind the shield.  “That’s what it looked like, Sarge,” Jules confirmed.  “I think I heard it shriek, almost like a bird.”  She eyed the fire, then lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug.  “And, um, the fire’s_ purple _.”_

_“Purple?” Wordy demanded sharply._

_Well, that was odd…since when did_ Wordy _have the inside scoop?  Even so, Sam replied, “Yeah_.  _It’s not spreading either; hasn’t moved at all as far as I can tell.”_

_“Almost like…” Jules trailed off, drawing in a sharp breath.  She and Sam stared at each other, realization flaring up, just like the flames that danced so close to them._

* * * * *

“The sniper who tried to shoot her was half a mile away,” Sam protested.  “That would’ve happened whether I was there or not.”

Toth was unmoved.  “And yet, despite the fact that Callaghan only had a single, minor injury, you tried to stay with her instead of backing up your teammates.”

Sam flushed bright red.

Turning towards Sarge, Toth demanded, “Is that when you knew Sam Braddock and Jules Callaghan were romantically involved?”

Calmly, with only a flicker of anger in his eyes, Sarge replied, “That’s when I informed them that their relationship was over if they wanted to remain on the team.”

Sam felt his stomach drop…that implied Sarge had figured it out earlier…but how _much_ earlier?  They’d been careful…and the City Hall Sniper had been _before_ Sarge got his ‘team sense’, so how had he known?

* * * * *

“Did you know the risk to the team?” Toth demanded of Jules.

Greg watched carefully, judging Jules himself, just as much as Toth; he knew and Jules knew, it had been the Sergeant who’d dropped the hammer and forced the breakup.  The Sergeant kept his frown off his face as Jules’ eyes flickered with only a touch of shame…anger and a spark of indignation were far more powerful.  Uneasy, Greg wondered if Jules and Sam resented his decision to stick with SRU policy instead of being more…flexible…

“Yes, I knew the risk to the team,” Jules admitted.  “That’s why I accepted it when Sarge demanded that we break up or transfer.  I worked my tail off to earn a spot on Team One and I wasn’t about to endanger that.”

But she had…though Sam’s attraction to Jules had been clear from the start, it wouldn’t have gone anywhere unless _Jules_ had _let_ it; Greg exerted stern control to keep his expression steady and his reaction hidden.  Toth might be able to read it off his polygraph, but Greg suspected the man would keep it to himself…or at least, to himself, Greg, and Holleran.  The stern control came in handy a moment later as Ed and Spike’s alarm flared and his connection with Wordy… _cut off_.  It took a moment to realize that Wordy had been knocked out and only his need to observe, protect his team as best he could – and keep Toth from finding out about magic – kept Greg in his seat.

Toth didn’t notice Greg’s inner conflict, neither did Jules; the psychologist fixed Jules with a stern glare and demanded, “Would you have continued the relationship secretly if you could?”

* * * * *

When Sam sighed, Greg knew the answer; it hurt that Sam would pick Jules over the rest of his teammates.  It also confirmed to Greg that, regardless of anything else, Jules and Sam’s relationship was very much _not_ over.  And now the Sergeant was stuck…their relationship was against SRU policy – a policy that existed for a very good reason – but Greg still didn’t want to boot them off his team and voluntarily destroy his family; the kids would be crushed, the rest of his team, already unnerved after Toth’s evaluations, would resent him and wonder if they were next…it was a disaster in the making.

“Yes,” Sam admitted to Toth.

Toth’s response was predictable – and right.  “There’s a reason that’s against SRU policy,” he said sternly.  “It puts your teammates in danger.”

“But it makes no difference,” Sam retorted, “because it’s over.  We’re colleagues now.  That is it.”

The polygraph reacted to that at once, but it really didn’t matter; Sam’s declaration was so obviously a lie that neither his Sergeant nor Dr. Toth bothered to call him on it.

* * * * *

“The Priority of Life code-- you’re familiar with it?” Toth demanded of Jules.

“Yes, I’m familiar with it.”

Despite that, Toth began, “You rescue hostages first.”

“Then officers, then subjects,” Jules broke in.

“Then officers, then subjects,” Toth finished.  He let the code hang a moment, then barked, “Would you break the Priority of Life code to save the life of Sam Braddock?”

The silence that followed was pointed and Greg wondered, to himself, if this was what it felt like to watch your family tear itself to bits.

* * * * *

Sam was waiting for her in the hallway as she left the briefing room.  As soon as she came out, he asked, “How’d it go?”

Jules stopped in front of him, looking down at her feet.  “Not good.”

“Me, neither,” he confirmed softly.

The brunette looked up.  “He gave me a hard time ‘cause of you.”

“Yeah.”

The shame evaporated under her indignation.  “They have us under a microscope just in case we treat each other any different.”  How could Sarge do this to her?  To _them_?  Didn’t he care about what _they_ wanted?  Shouldn’t he want them to be happy, even if they broke a stupid rule or two?

Sam’s own upset revealed itself in a sarcastic, “What’s it gonna take?  A chaperone?”

Decision crystallized as she moved to lean against the wall next to him.  “That’s the thing, Sam, it’s not gonna go away.”

And it was about time that Jules Callaghan put _herself_ and _her_ interests over what Sarge wanted.  He didn’t understand…he’d never been put in a situation where the person you loved most…was the person you were forbidden to love.

* * * * *

Greg and Toth regarded each other, more opponents than a cop working with a respected psychologist.  Greg’s sixth sense whispered that he should be careful, but he was tired of tiptoeing and not protecting his team.  It was time and past to go on the offensive.

Assuming his team survived Toth’s recommendations, _he_ would deal with Jules and Sam.  He hadn’t decided how yet, but when he did, he would make it clear to his team that their punishment was because they had broken SRU policy, _not_ because he himself was angry at the pair _or_ because it was what Toth and/or Holleran wanted him to do.

“Did you know about the relationship before Callaghan was almost shot?” Toth demanded angrily.  Without waiting for a reply, he accused, “You knowingly put them in danger.”

“Right here, right now,” Greg asserted, “That relationship is over.”

“The mere mention of each other’s name triggers stress reactions,” Toth countered sharply.

Greg had never relied on anything except his training, his experience, and his team to read a situation; Toth’s use of polygraphs irked him…his _reliance_ on them prompted Greg’s irritated return jab, “You know what, you read a lot into stress reactions.”

He let his volley hang, but Toth ignored the slight.  “Braddock and Callaghan clearly still have feelings for each other.”

“Yes,” Greg allowed, “Of some kind.”

Having won a concession, Toth pressed his point…and his agenda.  “Which they value, it seems, more than their own team’s security.  They both have cause to be expelled from SRU, as do you-- for turning a blind eye.”

Ah…and now they came to the _real_ point; Greg had wondered if this whole mess wasn’t just another attempt to take his team and his badge away from him.  Part of him was tempted to give Toth what he wanted…the part that was still struggling to stay afloat after a miserable, awful year packed with stressful hot calls and even more stressful personal problems.  But that would leave his team high and dry, tarred with Toth’s evaluations – they might even get booted from the SRU by default.

So instead of surrendering, Greg let his voice go sarcastic and opined, “You’re getting a kick out of this, aren’t you, Doc?”

Icily, Toth retorted, “I save lives my way.  It’s your way that seems to be the problem.”


	6. Family or… Family

Once this was done, he was gone, no matter _what_ Holleran said.  Seated at the table, Ed reeled off his three truths and a lie as fast as he could.  “Ed Lane.  Team leader.  Born in Scarborough.  We love Dr. Toth.”  The polygraph barely reacted to his blatant lie and Ed jibed, “Think you might have a problem with your machine there, Doc.”

Toth gave him a tiny smirk.  “Humor’s an effective way to deflect apprehension or anxiety.”

Sarcasm etched every last one of Ed’s words.  “That’s very perceptive.  Mind if I call you Larry?”

Though he’d been trying to throw the other man off, Toth only smiled and replied, “Sure.  How’s your home life?”

Bluntly, Ed returned, “Well, Larry, my wife is in labor, and I’m here, so you tell me.”

Greg’s eyes widened in shock…so he _hadn’t_ known what was going on outside the briefing room door; Ed felt a trifle better.  “Eddie…” he breathed.  “Ed, what are you doing here?  You got to go.”

“Sooner I get this done, the sooner I get there.”

But Greg didn’t give up.  Turning towards Toth, Parker insisted, “Doc, he’s got to go.”

Toth was not so easy to convince.  Without turning a hair, he observed, “Ed…that says a lot, your choice to stay here.”  Ed stiffened at the implication, though Toth didn’t _seem_ to notice.  “Thanks.  I won’t keep you long.  Word association-- no thinking.  Scorpio.”

“Solution.”

* * * * *

“Ready,” Donna called from right behind Sam.  He tensed, waiting for the snapped orders.  “Three, one, two, four!”

Sam fired four times, each shot taking out a small silver disc about the size of his palm, each marked with a number.

* * * * *

“Apple.”

“Core.”

* * * * *

Jules waited, intensely aware of Sam’s position and listening for Donna’s orders.  “And…one, four, three, two!” Donna shouted.

Each shot hit the right disc and Jules kept her small smile to herself as Sam and her teammates nodded to each other.

* * * * *

“Pancake.”

“Syrup.”

* * * * *

His hand felt as good as new, though Wordy had given them all a bad moment when he’d keeled over.  Spike forced himself to focus on his targets and Donna’s orders instead of stealing a look in his teammate’s direction; Lou would take care of Wordy if he went down again.

“Three, one, three, two!”

Four shot rang out, all on target.

* * * * *

“Team.”

“Saving lives.”

* * * * *

Bruised, battered, but Lou figured they’d all survive.  His eyes saw the targets, his ears listened for Donna, and his heart held steady, his confidence in his team and friends as much a part of him as breathing.  All they had to do was stick together and they’d make it.

“One, four, four, two!”

Four shots, four hits.

* * * * *

“Bull’s-eye.”

“Brainstem.”

* * * * *

His head ached like he’d walked into a sledgehammer hit, he was coated in sweat, and he was so tired that he was thinking of asking for a ride home, but Wordy shook all of that away as he eyed the targets.  Even the treacherous thoughts of his shaking right hand were pushed away as he waited on Donna.

“Four, two, three, one!”

He pulled the trigger four times, but only two targets were hit, leaving one and four glaring at the constable; Wordy resisted the sudden urge to let the gun drop and flee; his head drooped and he sighed heavily.

Then Donna stepped forward and took his gun with a sharp, “Let me see.”

Even in the dim range, he could see she wasn’t finding anything wrong as she checked the weapon briskly, but suddenly she thrust it back with a curt, “It was jammed.  Go again.”

Wordy wanted to gawp…no _way_ his gun had jammed; her eyes flicked to his and he understood.  Donna was willing to bend the rules because she’d seen him go down after helping Spike; whether she would’ve helped him regardless, he’d never know, but he took his stance again as she reset the targets.

“Three, two, four, one!”

Four gunshots rang out; four targets disappeared.

“You’re good,” Donna decided.

* * * * *

“Whipped cream.”

“Cherry.”

“Goran Tomasić.”

He saw the man in the square, his grieving son leaning over him and already wailing.  Evenly, without a twitch, Ed replied, “Had it coming.”

Naturally, Toth couldn’t leave the subject alone.  “His son, Petar, what did he have coming?”

* * * * *

_Ed heard Rollie’s voice over the radio, halting a new arrival with a quick, “Stop, stop, stop.”_

_The new arrival yelled, “Tata!” though Ed could barely hear it._

_Rollie’s voice was far more clear.  “Hey, hey, hey!  Easy, easy.”_

_“Tata!”_

_Whoever the new guy was, their subject knew him; he was shouting angrily at Rollie, thrusting the gun in his hand at the woman trapped in his grasp.  Ed focused, listening for his Sergeant’s order.  If the situation kept escalating, they’d have no choice._

_As if on cue, Greg’s voice rang out.  “Scorpio.”_

_“Hey, hey, hey, runner!” Rollie yelled._

_Just as he fired, Jules called, “Ed, the boy!”_

_Too late…and Ed would spend the next several months trying to get the image of a young innocent racing across his scope at the last second out of his head._

* * * * *

And Toth was just getting warmed up.  “Jackson…Barcliffe, recovered addict.  Wrong place, wrong time.”

Ed refused to let himself react.  “Put himself in the line of fire to save an undercover cop.”

The blasted polygraph telegraphed the distress he couldn’t hide; in the back of his mind, Ed was grateful the Boss was staying quiet…the ‘team sense’ had to be lit up like a Christmas tree.

“All the lives you can’t save,” Toth observed.  “What do you do with the guilt.”

* * * * *

_As they secured the apartment, Ed located their impromptu inside man…and blanched.  “EMT!  Get me an EMT!”_

“All those times your best wasn’t good enough.”

_Even as he went to his knees next to Jackson, he knew…he knew the kid wasn’t going home.  Still, Ed refused to give up.  “I gotcha, buddy.  I gotcha.  The paramedics are just around the corner.  Gotcha.  You’re gonna be okay.  You’re okay.”_

_Weakly, vaguely, Jackson whispered, “Ella…”_

_“Who’s Ella?  Who’s Ella, Jackson?”_

_With a final exhale, Jackson went limp in Ed’s arms._

_“Jackson?”_

“All the times you were too late.”

* * * * *

Determination coated every inch of Ed’s resolve; he would _not_ show this man the wounds that still tore and wept with sorrow, with loss and ghosts.  Greg, he trusted…Greg would never betray his trust, but Toth?  Toth was an outsider, not to be trusted with his deepest, darkest secrets under _any_ circumstance.

“Ed, you’re a sniper,” Toth announced quietly, watching him closely.  “I know you can regulate your breath and heart rate, mask your responses.”  He let that hang, then struck again.  “But your skin conductivity is telling another story.  Even heroes crack.  Let’s talk about your mentor, Danny.”

And that, _that_ was Toth’s mistake, his misstep, because Ed didn’t think of Danny, broken and so close to killing himself.

* * * * *

_From the right side of the room, a boyish voice rang out.  “I see ghosts too.”_

_Watery eyes swept left, their owner gaping at the sight of the young teenager standing near the open panels.  “Wh-what?”_

_Tears ran down Lance’s face and he met the broken man’s gaze.  “I know…I know about two parents who loved their kids more than life itself.”  Ed stilled in shock; never before had either of the teens talked to anyone but Greg about their parents.  “I know about a building that used to be a home.  And I know about two kids.  Who.  Lost.  Everything.”  Lance shook his head ever so slightly.  “The last time I saw my parents, they were_ alive _.  They_ knew _they were going to die and they did it anyway so we could_ live _.”_

_The love, the courage that must have taken; though Ed’s focus stayed on Danny, he marveled at the late Calvins and their willingness to die for their children.  He wanted to think that_ any _parent would do that, but he knew better…it was rare to see that kind of devotion anymore._

_Danny’s eyes widened and he panted as Lance plunged on.  “The caskets were closed at the funeral.  Too…too much damage.”  The boy halted, wiping at his eyes.  “Their ghosts are_ always _going to be there; I’m always going to wonder what it would have been like if they hadn’t died.  Walking my sister down the aisle at her wedding; teasing me over my crushes at school.”  Sapphire eyes glittered with more tears.  “Don’t do that to your family, Mister Rangford, please.”_

* * * * *

“Where are you going with this one, Doc?  Ed saved Danny’s life.”  Greg’s voice was quiet, assertive, though he _must_ have known that Ed wasn’t as rattled as he’d been before Toth had brought Danny up.

Toth, believing he’d rattled Ed sufficiently, asked, “When things get tough at work, where do you turn?”

“I count on my team.”

“Where do you turn if it’s something you can’t share with the team?”

In his mind’s eye, Ed saw Sophie and Clark, but not just them; two kids grinned at him from behind his Sarge’s back and Greg’s eyes laughed just as much as theirs.  Wordy related to him the story of Alanna’s nurse teasing the big constable about ‘Lanna’s strange family, humor in his voice over how the nurse had pranked him.  Spike and Lou shot him matching thumbs up; Jules leaned against Sam, the pair of them perfect together even if it was against policy.  And peeking in from the side was his brother Roy, with a mistrusting, but getting better Giles Onasi right behind him.  Truly, it had been a very long time since his family was limited to Sophie and Clark.

“My family.”

Toth seemed to accept that.  Calmly, he observed, “Your family keeps you grounded.  You can’t be the kind of cop you have to be if you’re not grounded.”  The doctor’s eyes flicked up to meet Ed’s and he even smiled a touch.  “Your family knows you, warts and all.  They’re there for you.  But what gets you through the tough calls, Ed, the lives you couldn’t save, the people you had to kill, the guilt?”

“My family,” Ed repeated.

“So how are you coping with them gone?”

Ed froze.  Distantly, he heard himself demand, “How do you know that?”

“Beside the point.”

No, it was _not_.  Anger sparked.  “I work twelve hour shifts.  I train fourteen hours a week on top of that so that I don’t cost somebody a life, so I don’t let my team down.”  Incredulity mixed with his anger as he questioned, “And you’re saying what, that I am not a good enough cop because I am not more of a family man, is that it?”

“I don’t care what kind of family man you are,” Toth claimed.  _Ha!_   “I care whether or not you can cope with the job, for your team’s sake.  It’s a question of balance.”

“Of balance?” Ed echoed, before snapping, “You try telling that to a guy with a gun to his head, to a kid on a ledge.  What do you want me to say here?  ‘Sorry about your luck, I got to get home for dinner’?  Is that it?”

“I get that,” Toth murmured, but Ed’s fury was up and riding higher by the second.

“That’s good,” he hissed.  “Now, you tell Holleran to stay out of my family life.”

Toth didn’t twitch.  “It’s not Commander Holleran.”

Horror clenched him; no, not him…not one of the few he trusted unconditionally…  But he had to know.  Blue eyes swept right to focus on his Sergeant.  “Greg…how did he know that Sophie left me?  How’d he know about that?”

Stress lined his Sergeant’s face, stress that mixed with sorrow and exhaustion; Parker looked like a man at the end of his rope, but Ed couldn’t muster up any sympathy.  “Eddie, it was in my notes,” Greg murmured regretfully, flicking a look in Toth’s direction.

Betrayal welled up.  “You put my situation with Sophie in your _notes_?”

There was a moment as the two men squared off, then Greg’s gaze dropped away.  “Ed, I put everything in them.”

“Everything?”  If Toth had the Sarge’s notes and found out…

A flash of what might have been a grin.  “Two separate notebooks,” Greg corrected, knowing Ed’s train of thought.  “But, yes, Eddie, I put your family situation in my notes.”  A rueful look.  “And Spike’s family situation, too.”

Ed ignored the unspoken message, bristling angrily.  He _trusted_ his Sergeant to keep the situation to himself, to guard Ed’s secrets just as he would his own; he would _never_ make _that_ mistake again.  The accusation flew without conscious thought.  “ _You_ called him in!”

Alarm shone in brown eyes and Greg shook his head, but Ed was done, finished.  Briskly, he stood, stripping the polygraph away; he’d spent too much time here already.  “You know what?” he decided, pulling out his badge and tossing it on the table in front of Toth.  His gun sprang to his hand and he unloaded it with quick angry motions.

“Eddie.”

The former team leader didn’t even glance at his ex-boss…ex- _friend_.  “Gentlemen…” he drawled, setting the gun and its magazine down with a firm thud.  “I got a baby I got to meet.”  With that, he strode around the table and out the briefing room door…for the last time.


	7. If Not the Boss, Then Who?

“Ed.”

Team One watched from the sidelines as their team leader stalked out, not even glancing behind him as he retorted, “Nothing to say right now, Boss.  I got to go.”

“What’s going on?” Jules asked their Sergeant, but he didn’t reply; frustration was written all over his face as he stopped, looking after Ed.  After a moment, he shook his head and turned, walking back to the briefing room.  The force of his hand against the room’s controls was the only indicator of how angry he was, that, and the hardness of his eyes.

Donna mentally whistled to herself as the briefing room door lowered.  Aloud, she informed the unhappy group, “Okay.  I’m done.”  Looking over the rag-tag team, she sighed softly.  “Not an easy process.”

“Could say that,” Spike muttered.

“Holleran didn’t bring him in,” Donna remarked.  “I’m sure he was going to tell you that.”

“We know it was the Boss,” Sam told her.

Before Donna could reply, Jules added, “He was just doing what he thinks is best for the team.”

Grim, the blonde shook her head.  “No, it wasn’t Sergeant Parker, either.”

She was instantly the focus of attention.  “What?” Wordy croaked out; he _still_ looked awful after whatever he’d done to fix Spike’s hand.

“Then who was it?” Lou asked, surreptitiously passing Wordy a water bottle; the brunet cast him a grateful look as he cracked the bottle open and guzzled a third of it in seconds.

Donna shook her head.  “Not even Holleran knows who, exactly, called Toth in,” she revealed.  “Some bigwig with a lot of political pull, though.  If Holleran knows anything else about this guy, he didn’t tell me.”

Team One traded decidedly unnerved looks; Donna didn’t blame them.  It was one thing if you could justify the outsider psych evaluations as something a trusted superior ordered for the good of the entire team, but another thing entirely if they were ordered by someone you didn’t know, didn’t trust, and had no way of knowing their motives.

Wordy finished the water bottle, still looking rather limp and worn out; Donna noticed Lou and Spike trade looks and figured that the pair would see to it that Wordy got home safely.  Commander Holleran strode into the room before any more questions could be asked or opinions exchanged.  “Go home,” he ordered.  At the mutinous looks he got, he shook his head.  “Go home,” he repeated.  “We’ll let you know how this shakes out.”

* * * * *

Negotiator and psychologist faced off, each man measuring the other up.  Parker chose to break the stand-off first.  “I’ll admit I needed help this year,” he began, his eyes intense.  “I’ll even admit that, in theory, an objective point of view and fresh eyes on my people was needed.”

Toth nodded, as if Parker’s concessions were a victory for him.  “Your instinct is right,” he replied.  “There are fault lines running all through this team.”

“I didn’t need you to break them down,” Parker snapped angrily, his eyes flashing and his head held high.  “I didn’t need you to throw their worst moments in their faces and break them apart from each other.  And what _you_ call fault lines,” helpless fury flashed, “That’s them being human,” the Sergeant finished, voice firm.

“It’s natural that you’re feeling guilty and protective,” Toth opined smoothly.

“Stop!” Parker growled.  “This was never _about_ my team, was it?”  Toth stilled.  “No, whoever called you in wasn’t interested in my team, per se.  Just me.  And the best way to get to _me_ is through my team.”

For a moment, the two regarded each other again.  Finally, Toth sighed to himself.  “You are partly correct, Sergeant,” he replied.  “I was contacted by a man of high political standing who is deeply concerned about the stress you and your team have been under.”  The doctor’s eyes sharpened.  “Judging from the material I am cleared to see, his concerns are warranted.”

“But?” Parker pressed.

Toth’s expression twisted in indignation and fury.  “Have you _any_ idea how much has been left out of your official file, Sergeant?  When I saw just how much _had_ been left out, I realized that as bad as the non-classified material is, the _classified_ is far worse.”

Greg froze in shock; had all his efforts to keep magic secret been for naught?  “And what?” he asked slowly, “Do you believe has been left out of my official file?”

“A little over a year ago, your official file shows a two week period of illness,” Toth began.  “One would think you had simply run afoul of a particularly bad cold or fever – not that you spent a full week in a coma!  And another week relearning how to walk!”

* * * * *

_Greg looked around the rocky prison he’d been thrust into by a towering blue demon.  The bars reminded him of teeth or claws; they’d retracted before he’d been tossed in, only to snap shut as soon as he was past them.  Parker shivered in the cell’s chill air…there was no pillow, no blanket, and only a rock slab for a bed…and something was missing.  It felt like someone had taken a chunk out of him, as if a part of his_ soul _had been torn away._

_“Comfortable?”_

_The stocky man snapped around, instantly backing away from the woman right outside his cell.  Long black hair tangled around her head and face; green eyes glinted in amusement at his plight.  She cocked her head to the side, an expression of concern on her face, but it never touched her eyes._

_Greg drew himself up.  “As a matter of fact, no, I am not comfortable and I would like to be released now.  Unless you want to be brought up on charges for kidnapping and unlawfully detaining a law enforcement officer.”_

_Laughter spilled from her, haughty and mocking; Greg held firm and steady as she chortled at him.  At length, her laughter stopped.  “Poor little knight,” she mocked, pointedly sweeping a crystal ball up into his view.  “Forsaken by his friends and abandoned to our tender mercies.”  A cruel smile joined gleeful green eyes.  “Get used to being here, little knight, because you are going to be here for the_ rest _of your miserable existence.”_

_As she vanished, he finally realized what was missing: he couldn’t sense his teammates any more.  Where once there had been a pulse in the background, by turns comforting, exasperating, and ulcer-inducing, now there was…nothing.  The Sergeant collapsed as his soul wailed anguish and reached futilely for his lost ‘team sense’._

_It would take over twenty-four hours for Greg to recover from the shock of being forcibly cut off from his team.  And even then, it would take his team’s rescue and the reestablishment of the ‘team sense’ before he fully recovered._

* * * * *

In a cool, calm voice, Greg countered, “I did _not_ spend a week relearning how to walk.”  He’d had problems galore after the Netherworld, but actually _walking_ hadn’t been one of them.  He let that hang, then demanded, “Is there anything _else_ you feel has been left out of my official file?”

Toth snorted pure disdain.  “The death of your nephew,” he accused, settling himself against the table and watching Parker closely.

In spite of himself, Greg smiled.  “Before that could be added to my file, Dr. Toth, my nephew was found alive.”  When Toth stared, open-mouthed, Greg added, “My nephew was rescued from my car before it burned, but then his rescuer decided to kidnap him in order to replace her dead son.”

The Sergeant cocked his head to the side.  “I’m sure something will _eventually_ end up in my file, once Commander Holleran has finished the legal wrangling that mess produced; I understand the coroner’s office is being particularly petulant about revoking my nephew’s death certificate.  Of course, that doesn’t even touch on the forensics department’s scrambling after their report on my torched car turned out to be utterly worthless.”

Toth jerked in surprise, but rallied after only a moment.  “Regardless, an episode like that is very traumatic; you should have _requested_ help rather than attempt to do the psychological evaluations for your team by _yourself_ this year.”

“In theory, I don’t disagree,” Parker retorted sharply.  “However, anyone without Official Secrets Act clearance is, just as you are, limited to our non-classified calls and personal files.  I judged it better to have someone, namely myself, who knew the whole, and by next year, I expected to _have_ the help I don’t deny I need.”  He studied his opponent, then questioned, “How, exactly, were you given this assignment?  And why did you accept, knowing you couldn’t have all the facts?”

For a moment, Parker thought Toth would refuse to tell him.  He could see it in the man’s face, on the tip of his tongue – Greg braced himself to fight for his right to know.  But then Toth looked away.  “I accepted it in hopes of pulling a good man, stressed to his limits, back from the edge.”

Toth’s eyes skewered Greg; the Sergeant stiffened.  “Your team and its record speaks for itself, but even heroes break; you are _dangerously_ close to that, Sergeant.  Once I had even the bare bones of the situation, I could not sit by, even knowing that I would be denied valuable information.  Even knowing that you and your superior would fight to keep you and your team on-duty, regardless of the cost to yourselves.”

Toth paused, but Greg didn’t speak, sensing that Toth wasn’t done.  “No one can do this job forever, Sergeant Parker.  There is no shame in admitting your limits and walking away.”

“I can’t.”  Simple, blunt truth.  “Even if I wanted to, I can’t walk away now.”

Toth examined him, curiosity glittering.  “Why?”

* * * * *

_“Why take away Alanna’s wand?” Greg asked his_ nipotes _.  “Why lift the Trace in the first place; isn’t that illegal?”_

_“Yes,” Alanna replied simply, looking up.  “Even when Lord Potter was under threat, the summer after his sixth year and before his seventeenth birthday, his protectors never lifted the Trace, so yes, it’s illegal to lift the Trace.”  She traced the box that hid her new wand; neither she nor Lance had opened the elegant boxes.  “That’s why Auror Simmons took my wand away…to make it look like I gave it up voluntarily.  That way, he could claim that since I surrendered my wand, the Trace wasn’t needed anymore.”_

_“And he lifted it in the first place because he didn’t want the Division of Mysteries to use it to find us,” Lance put in solemnly.  Greg’s head snapped to his nephew, eyes wide; his nephew smiled bitterly.  “Welcome to hiding from the magical government 101; never give them any way to track you magically.”_

_“But you two aren’t illegal,” Greg protested automatically._

_Lance snorted, resting his head on his arm.  “Not in theory,” he agreed sourly, looking between his wand box and his sister.  “But if the Division of Mysteries decides it wants to_ investigate _the abilities of a full-fledged Wild Mage, well…no one’s going to protest all that loudly.  Not for_ Wild Mages _.”_

_The pieces clicked together…Sam was right; the kids weren’t considered human anymore, so any – and all – legal protection was gone.  As long as their magic wasn’t_ proven _to have been suppressed, no crime against them would even be investigated, much less prosecuted.  Slowly, he asked, “If my team walks away from the Auror Division, could they use that as an excuse to come after you two?”_

_Two unhappy pairs of eyes looked up at him, but it was Alanna who replied.  “Not officially, especially since Madame Locksley made such a point of telling Auror Onasi you could walk away with no repercussions.”_

_“But?”_

_Red locks still streaked with platinum blonde shook.  “If you_ do _walk away, the Division of Mysteries won’t have to hide what they’re doing from the Auror Division.  Right now, they have to, ‘cause no matter what_ they _think of us, all of the Aurors like and respect your team.”_

_Parker slumped.  Trapped no matter how he looked at it.  Either he could stay with the Auror Division and_ maybe _get advanced warning if the Unspeakables were about to come after his family or he could walk away and live with the possibility that one day, his family would be gone and he could’ve prevented it, if only he’d been willing to stay in a pit of vipers._

_Memory flashed, of a five-year-old werewolf and the sacrifices needed to save her; he could do no less for his kids…_

* * * * *

“Just how it is,” Greg asserted, making it clear with his posture that further prying would _not_ be welcome.  Grimly, he met Toth’s gaze.  “Look, regardless of what you think of me, my _team_ doesn’t deserve what you did to them.  And my guys chose each other; they’ve got each other’s back.  To me, _that_ is more important than if they handle each call perfectly; we can’t handle them perfectly…we’re just as human as anyone else is.”

Toth gave it right back.  “They need a _sergeant_ , not a friend or a father,” he snapped.  “You’ve turned this team into your family because you lost your own; even after you gained a previously unknown niece and nephew, you _still_ treated this team like your family instead of a SWAT team.  It stops now.”  Turning to collect his papers, he added, “Give me half an hour and we’ll meet with your commander.”

“Who called you in?” Greg asked, his pride stinging from the rebuke and his heart sadly acknowledging that Toth was right.

He didn’t think that Toth would answer, but as Toth broke down his polygraphs and tucked his things away, he remarked, “A truly gifted individual, Sergeant Parker.  One with a deep understanding of the stresses facing men and women in your profession.”

“A friend of yours?”

“I’ve never met him in person,” Toth admitted, still working.  “But we’ve corresponded a number of times, both about this matter and several others in the military that are currently vexing me.”

“Who is he?”  His sixth sense was tingling, shouting that this was the key, the answer to everything that had happened today.

Toth stopped, turning and regarding Greg closely.  Silence draped the room as Greg looked back, waiting as patiently as he would if this had been a negotiation rather than…whatever this was.

“Doctor Charles Henry Moffet.”


	8. Linked By Fate

Horror and fury raced through Sergeant Parker’s veins.  “Moffet?” he echoed hollowly.  Even to himself, his voice sounded strange and distorted.

Toth blinked in surprise, even rearing back as he started at Parker’s tone of voice.  “You’ve heard of Dr. Moffet, then?”

“Yes, I’ve heard of him,” Parker agreed, his fists clenching.  Without another word to Toth, he headed for the door.

* * * * *

After dropping Wordy – and his minivan – off, Spike slid into the passenger seat of Lou’s car.  “So, quick stop back at the barn and I’ll get my car.”

Lou shook his head.  “Nah, I was hopin’ I could crash at your place tonight.”

Spike froze.  “Ah.  That’s not such a good idea today, buddy.”

“That’s why I want to,” Lou replied steadily.  “I got a best friend who’s hurting and I haven’t had his back.  It’s about time I did.”

The bomb tech couldn’t muster up a response to that as Lou put his car in drive and headed for the Scarlatti residence.  Once at the house, Lou parked where Spike hesitantly pointed him to and the two men walked inside.  Lou grimaced as Spike’s father, seated at the table, spotted them and immediately lumbered to his feet.  He stumbled away without looking back, coughing and rasping as he left the room.

Lou snuck a glance at Spike’s face and flinched internally at the hurt and longing on his best friend’s face.  As Spike’s mother chased after his father, crying, “Dominic!  Dominic!” and chattering on in Italian, Lou rested one hand on his friend’s shoulder and gently squeezed.

* * * * *

Commander Holleran looked up as Sergeant Parker barged into his office without knocking, an expression of mingled horror, realization, and determination on his face.  “Moffet!” he blurted.

“Beg pardon?” Holleran asked, arching one brow.

Parker pulled in a steadying breath as he braced both hands on the commander’s desk.  “Moffet called Toth in,” he explained.  “Gave Toth parts of my magic-side personal file, too.”

“You’re sure?” Holleran demanded.

“Yes.”  When Holleran gave his subordinate an expectant look, the Sergeant grimaced and explained tersely, “I asked Toth who arranged for _him_ to do the psych evals this year and why he’d do them when he knew coming in that he couldn’t have all the facts.”

“And?”  Commander Holleran was getting a very sinking feeling about this mess.

“He told me, sir.  Told me flat out that it was Moffet who called him in, but I don’t think Toth knows who Moffet is; he referred to Moffet as someone he respects even if he’s never met him in person.”

The commander considered his Sergeant, then part of Parker’s explanation snagged in his mind and his eyes widened.  “Dr. Moffet gave Dr. Toth parts of your magic-side file?  Which parts?”

Parker grimaced.  “My collapse and coma, as well as the report about _mio nipote_ dying.  Lucky for us, it sounds like Moffet hasn’t directly told Toth about magic, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Toth puts the pieces together; there’s a reason my ‘illness’ was kept low-key in my official file.”  Not to mention the reasoning for why no part of Lance’s recent ordeal graced his uncle’s personal file.

Holleran frowned deeply, leaning back in his chair and tapping the tips of his fingers together as he thought through his options and how to respond.

* * * * *

Wordy smiled to himself as he entered his daughters’ room and spied the blanket fort they’d set up.  After a moment, he made his way around the bed, his smile turning sad.  Soon enough, they’d be grown up enough to go off to magic school and start to learn how to wield their magic; with any luck, he and Shelley would be able to keep them grounded in the tech world and teach them not to accept the wizarding world’s many prejudices against anyone and everyone who didn’t fit the ‘standard mold’.

“Are you in here?” Wordy called, unsurprised when Claire didn’t respond.  On the opposite side of the bed, he crouched to see Claire with her magical creature book in hand; she was focusing intently on the page she’d found.  “Hi,” he called again, pleased when she glanced up at him with a tiny smile.  “How are you?”

As Wordy crawled under the ‘roof’ of the fort, Claire shyly replied, “Good.”

Once he was under enough to sit next to Claire, Wordy sat down next to her and asked, “What you got there?”  She tilted the book and Wordy’s eyebrows shot up at the page she was on.  Scrolled across the top of the entry was the word _Griffins_.

“I don’t understand, Daddy,” Claire complained.

“What’s that, sweetheart?”

“None of the pictures are right, Dad.  Illishar doesn’t look like _this_.”  As she spoke, Claire jabbed her finger at the moving creature on the page.

She was right; the griffin’s eagle head looked like a bald eagle’s head and it didn’t have ears at all, much less the feathered, furry ears that Illishar had.  Moreover, the lion’s tail was _all_ lion, with none of the eagle-like tail feathers Illishar possessed.  As Wordy looked closer, he noticed that the front legs were all eagle, while Illishar sported lion legs that ended in eagle claws on his forelegs.  The transition between eagle and lion was sharp in the image, not smooth with the lion and eagle blending together to form the whole; Wordy frowned as he regarded the picture.

“Well, honey, maybe Illishar is a different type of gryphon,” Wordy offered after examining the page.  “Tell you what; we can ask Lance the next time we see him, okay?”

Claire looked up and nodded.  “Okay, Daddy.”  She closed the book and leaned against his side as his eyes trailed down to his right hand.  As he flexed it and thought, Claire reached up and put her smaller hand in his.

* * * * *

“At this point, it doesn’t matter, Sergeant,” Commander Holleran remarked with a sad sigh.  “Dr. Toth is here, he’s done the psych evals and whatever he’s found, we’ll just have to deal with.”

“Sir, that gives Moffet the advantage,” Parker protested.

“Sergeant, I won’t let Dr. Toth break up your team without cause,” Holleran promised, leaning forward.  “I may, depending on what Dr. Toth discovered, demand that you and your team _fix_ those issues, but I won’t let him – or Dr. Moffet – dictate what _my_ teams may or may not do or who can be on them.”  Silence hung between them and Holleran gently asked, “Have you and your team decided how to handle the Auror Division?”

Parker stared at the ground and Holleran restrained a flinch at the trapped look on his subordinate’s face.  It took a few moments, but the Sergeant finally replied, “I haven’t told them yet, but if we chose to leave the Auror Division, then _mio nipotes_ might be even more at risk than they are right now.  I wanted to wait until things calmed down to tell my team, but I’ve pulled _mio nipotes_ out of school indefinitely and I’m looking into enrolling them in a tech-side high school for the rest of their educational career.”

Holleran nodded thoughtfully.  “Requalification might take another few days,” he opined.  “In light of today, I’ll contact Commander Locksley and tell her that you and your team will have to do your magic-side requalify another day, perhaps another week.  Given our suspicions, I doubt she’ll give your team any trouble over the delay.”

Sergeant Parker returned Holleran’s nod.  “Thank you, sir.”

* * * * *

Sam sat in his apartment’s living room, relaxing in his favorite chair and reading a novel in lieu of dwelling on the disastrous psych evaluations or his feelings for Jules.  She was right; they were still there and they weren’t going to go away.  Nevertheless, he didn’t regret anything he – _they_ – had done…unless it was their decision to accept their Sergeant’s demand that they break up or leave the team.  He hadn’t regretted it at first, but the more time that went by, the more he regretted his decision.

A quiet knock at the door brought his head around.  “Coming,” he called as he set his book down and got out of his chair.  At the door, he opened it and stopped in surprise.

Outside the door, Jules met his eyes and moved to enter; without hesitation, Sam shifted out of her way.  Evidently, he wasn’t the only one fed up with hiding and suppressing their relationship…

* * * * *

Greg paced back and forth, needing to move, needing to let his anxiety out in some fashion.  With his teammates all off-duty and – more importantly – his team leader angry at him, Greg flicked his ‘team sense’ off.

As he moved, he wondered if he could have handled the day any better than he had; though nothing immediately came to mind, that didn’t comfort him, for, once given the opportunity, the doubts and fears of the past few weeks flooded in.  Even if he’d handled evaluation day as best he could, he’d not handled _other_ things anywhere _near_ as well as he could have… _should_ have.

The pacing slowed as his biggest failures smacked at him again; drinking so heavily that his family left, not intervening in Sam and Jules’ relationship before the City Hall Sniper, Lou’s near death by land mine…on and on it went.

_I’m so tired of failing…_

* * * * *

Ed drove through traffic, focused on the road, but the lion’s share of his attention was on his phone.  Though he was driving with his hands-free black Bluetooth headset, his worry for his family meant his driving was much more reckless and aggressive than usual.

“Clark, what do you mean?” he demanded as he swooped around a car going much too slow.  At his son’s jumbled response, he barked, “Okay, Clark, put your Mom on.  Yeah, put her on right now.”

The Flex flew left, dodging around another slow driver as Ed pushed down even harder on his gas pedal.  His wife’s voice came through the Bluetooth.  “Okay, Soph, what’s going on?” he asked.

“Ed, where are you?”

Immediately, he informed her, “Soph, I’m on my way.”

Crying came through the phone and Sophie choked out, “The baby’s in distress.”

“What’s, wh-what’s that mean?  What do you mean, the baby’s in distress?”

* * * * *

Greg found himself on one of the workout benches, staring at the closed briefing room door.  His team, his surrogate family, was coming apart at the seams and it was all his fault.  In his inner turmoil, he struggled to place the date and time on when it had started going wrong, but he couldn’t find it.  Too much had gone right _and_ wrong to piece it together.

The more he thought about it, the more the years seemed to press down on him; failures screamed at him, mistakes cost lives, judgment calls felt wrong in hindsight, and the darkest part of his soul laughed at his pitiful efforts to make a difference.

* * * * *

The SRU team leader sped up even more, frantic to get to his wife, son, and baby.  He ducked around another car – a dark gray SUV.  “Bradycardia-- what is that?” he questioned Sophie.

“Her heart rate’s low,” Sophie sobbed, “She’s not getting enough oxygen.”

“What do you mean, her heart’s too slow?  Sophie.”

Even as he steered for the exit, the SUV he’d just passed pulled up alongside him, the driver shouting and flipping Ed off.

“No, Soph,” Ed started to say; a sharp honk from the SUV brought his head around and he shouted back, “Come on, buddy.”  Sophie started to flare up and Ed hastily added, “No, Soph, not you.”  Shifting onto the exit ramp, Ed reassured his wife, “Sweetheart, I love you, yeah.”

The SUV honked again and pulled right in front of Ed, cutting off his fledgling attempt to coax more speed from his car.  The SUV cut in so close that Ed had to hit the brakes to avoid a collision.  “Don’t go there, buddy,” Ed growled at the other driver.  Sophie’s voice recalled him to his phone call and again he reassured her, “Soph-- no, I’m on my way.”

The light at the bottom of the ramp turned red and Ed reluctantly slowed to a halt, thumping his steering wheel and willing the light to change as quickly as possible.  He glared at the other SUV, but focused on Sophie.  “Soph, I love you more than anything in the world,” he murmured, promising, “I’m gonna be there in minutes.”

The light turned green, but the SUV in front of him didn’t budge.  Peering through the SUV’s rear window, Ed saw the driver on his own phone.  Frantic for his wife, Ed laid on his horn and shouted, “Come…come on!”

* * * * *

Faster and faster the thoughts tumbled through Greg’s mind; it felt like he was being assaulted from all sides by accusations, each one a twisting knife that he had no defense against.  He hunched over on the bench, grateful that no one was around to see him start to crack; doubt and uncertainty swirled around him, squeezing like a vice.

Then one small, still thought whispered through his mind, so soft he could barely hear it over the tumult of his inner anguish.  _“Have I not chosen you?”_

The Sergeant froze, the hair on the back of his neck prickling; all of the harsh, hurtful thoughts fell silent, as if they were afraid of the whisper.

Somehow, he wasn’t quite sure how, all of his memories, every last one of his failures, traveled through his mind again, but they looked different than they had before.  This time, he saw how the chain of events linked together, how each stage of his life had prepared him for his job, for his family, both blood and chosen, and even for challenges in his future.  Good, bad, or indifferent, everything in his life’s path had a purpose, Someone behind the scenes directing the steps, aware of his failures and faults, but using him nonetheless.

_Why me?  What do I have to offer?_   Shame bowed his shoulders and Greg couldn’t help but think that the Someone might want to find someone better for the job, whatever it was; the job clearly needed an individual who hadn’t spent most of their life screwing up.  Someone _capable_ , not a miserable, lonely failure of a man.

A single verse, learned long ago and ignored as life wore on, as disappointments piled on failures and his world fell apart, appeared in his mind’s eye like a firework.  _‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’_ **(2)**  With a past like his, there was still a plan for him?  Ridiculous.  Absolute lunacy.

But…  Three years ago, that miserable, lonely failure of a man with no family had opened his door to find a brand-new family waiting for him.  No family, no hope, and no future beyond his job, and then, all of sudden, he’d had all three handed to him on a silver platter.  He hadn’t _earned_ his _nipotes_ , didn’t _deserve_ them, but he still had them.  If he’d been picked out by Someone who knew his past, his faults and his failures, but still gave him a new family anyway, then who was he to say no?  For whatever reason, he’d been given a second chance and now…now it felt like he was being offered something beyond his understanding, an invitation to the greatest adventure he’d ever dreamed of or maybe it was beyond what _anyone_ ever _could_ dream of.

A chill ran up his spine and, like a demented chorus, the accusations shrieked again, pounding at him with the knowledge that he didn’t _deserve_ what was being offered and how could he think that he could make up for his misbegotten past?  How could he think that all his screw-ups and missteps could be forgotten, forgiven, just like _that_?

* * * * *

Ed stared at the car ahead of him; the light was green and the blasted car _wasn’t moving!_   “Come on!” Ed roared as he pounded on his horn and slipped the Bluetooth off his ear.  “It’s green!”

The other driver rolled down his window and made a sharp, angry gesture; he yelled back, “Go around!”

The frustrated cop put his car in reverse, but a cautionary honk alerted him to the fact that the car behind him was too close for him to back up.  Ed groaned and snatched a quick look at the clock; Sophie was counting on him and this _louse_ was in his way!

“Let’s go!  Let’s go!” he yelled, honking once more at the idiot in the gray SUV.  “Come on!”  Frustration crystallized into decision and Ed threw the Flex into park.  Fury coated him as he thrust his door open and pushed himself out to confront the driver who wouldn’t _get out of his way_.  As he got out and started towards the gray SUV, the other man clambered out of his own car, compounding Ed’s annoyance.  Still, Ed forced himself to use his ‘official’ tone; the constable briskly ordered, “All right, back in the car, let’s move the vehicle, please, let’s do it now.”

The other driver closed his door and glared back at Ed, but his attitude was cut off by the police uniform Ed still wore.  “Okay.”

Satisfied, Ed turned to get back in his SUV, but something out of the corner of his eye drew him back.  The driver opened his door and yanked a silver semi-auto out of his car.  Ed’s right hand flew down, only to slap helplessly against his empty holster.  With the tables turned, Ed put his hands up and fruitlessly tried to talk the other man down.  “Okay…let’s just slow this down.  Let’s just slow it down.”

* * * * *

Greg’s breathing hitched and the silent accusations slashed at him again.  It was true, how many times had he insisted on his own way…acting like he could live life without help, get through everything he saw on the job by himself.  At this stage, he didn’t deserve to be rescued from his problems or given a clean slate.

Abruptly, his ‘team sense’ came to life, flaring warning.  A voice, one he recognized, cried out in a frantic plea for help.  _“Greg!”_

Then fire erupted from his chest and arm; he bit back a cry of pain and fell forward, slamming down on the cool tile of the station’s floor, just as, miles away, Ed Lane collapsed backwards as bullets struck him in the arm and chest.

 

_~ Ad Alia_

 

[2] Jeremiah 29:11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fade to black...To Be Continued...
> 
> Stay tuned for "United We Stand", starting December 21st, 2018, right here in the main Flashpoint archive.
> 
> See You On The Other Side


End file.
